Bayswater company Resource Recovery Solutions has been fined $330,000 for a series of workplace safety breaches, the largest fine ever imposed in Western Australia.
Bayswater company Resource Recovery Solutions has been fined $330,000 for a series of workplace safety breaches, the largest fine ever imposed in Western Australia.
The company has also been ordered to pay $234,000 in costs.
It was sentenced today in Perth Magistrates’ Court, four months after it was found guilty of gross negligence in failing to provide and maintain a safe work environment.
It was also convicted of failing to comply with an improvement notice issued by WorkSafe WA.
Its conviction marked the first time an entity had been found guilty of gross negligence under the Occupational Safety and Health Act, the most serious offence possible under the Act.
The convictions related to a 2016 incident at the company’s Bayswater facility, when a labour hire worker lost an arm while trying to remove unsuitable items from a conveyer belt.
The company was spared the maximum possible fine for gross negligence of $500,000 after Magistrate Lynette Dias noted its breaches did not lead to the death of a worker.
If the incident had occurred after October 2018, the maximum available fine would have been $2.7 million.
WorkSafe WA commissioner Darren Kavanagh said Resource Recovery Solutions had a long history of flouting workplace safety laws.
The 2016 incident was the third serious safety breach at Resource Recovery Solutions.
In 2013, a worker at its Bayswater facility was killed when an overloaded roof panel collapsed and crushed him.
The company was fined $85,000 over that incident.
In 2015, another worker suffered a broken arm when he was dragged into a moving conveyor belt with no guarding.
Resource Recovery Solutions’ director Sam Mangione has also been charged with gross negligence.
Mr Mangione has pleaded not guilty to the charge, which carries a maximum penalty of a $250,000 fine and two years’ imprisonment.
He is the first person in Western Australia to face the possibility of a jail term over a workplace safety incident.
The largest fine previously handed down in WA for a workplace safety incident was $285,000, against private contractor G4S Custodial Services and the Department of Corrective Services.
That was over the 2008 death of a prisoner who suffered heatstroke after being locked in a van for three and a half hours while being transported to Kalgoorlie.
Only nine organisations have been fined in excess of $100,000, according to WorkSafe’s summary of successful prosecutions since 2005.
In her sentencing remarks today, magistrate Dias said RRS mostly employed Sri Lankan workers through labour hire form Mode 2 Group - which also faces charges.
She said the workers had little training or experience and had little or no English language skills.
“The sorters were left to their own devices to perform a hazardous job,” she said.
The company’s machinery had unguarded and dangerous moving parts and suffered regular blockages.
She said there was a blatant disregard for worker safety, adding that the company knew its contravention of safety standards was likely to cause serious harm.
The workers used their hands to remove the blockages, as they had not been trained in any other techniques and were under time pressure to complete their work.
“The risk was obvious and known to the company,” Magistrate Dias said.
She said easy and cost-effective measures could have been implemented to improve worker safety.
Mr Mangione sent an email to WorkSafe in January 2016 claiming the company was compliant with a workplace notice – just days before the accident.
However the company had not fitted a guarding solution, as ordered.
Today’s sentencing comes just days after the passage of new work health and safety legislation in WA.
The new Act attracted strong debate because it includes new industrial manslaughter offences.
Employers who knowingly engage in conduct resulting in an employee’s death can be fined up to $10 million and sentenced to 20 years in jail.
The most contentious aspect was that employers can be jailed for up to five years for a lesser offence, of failing to comply with their duty of care, directly leading to death or serious harm.
The new legislation was strongly supported by Families Left Behind spokesperson Regan Ballantine, whose 17-year-old son Wesley fell to his death inside the old GPO building in Forrest Place during a construction project in 2017.
Notably, the charges laid over Mr Ballantyne’s death are less serious than the charges against Mr Mangione.
His employer, Industrial Construction Services, has been charged with failing to provide and maintain a safe work environment and, by that failure, causing death.
The maximum penalty for this offence is $400,000.
ICS director Adam Tony Forsyth and manager Luke Fraser Corderoy have each been personally charged with a similar offence, with a maximum penalty of $200,000.
All have pleaded not guilty.
The new legislation includes larger penalties for a wide range of offences.
