A Welshpool-based metal fabrication company and its manager have been hit with $650,000 in fines over an incident which left an employee with serious burns.
A Welshpool-based metal fabrication company and its manager have been hit with $650,000 in fines after a workplace incident which left a young employee with serious burns to 30 per cent of his body.
PGQW, formerly known as Boxline Industries, and manager Bradley Michael Shackleton pleaded guilty to failing to provide and maintain a safe work environment, as well as two breaches of the Occupational Safety and Health Regulations 1996.
The charges relate back to an incident in November 2018 in which an employee's kerosene covered clothes caught fire after he was tasked with applying kerosene to about 30 metal sheets and sanding them.
The court was told the new employee had not been provided with adequate training, nor had he been provided with personal protective equipment.
The lack of PPE resulted in the employee being splashed with kerosene from an unlabelled plastic bottle as the sheets were sanded.
The following day, in the same contaminated shirt, the employee had begun welding shipping container locking handles when his shirt and pants caught fire.
The employee suffered burns to 30 per cent of his body, including his face and ear, chest and arms, stomach and torso and both thighs, requiring 13 surgeries over the past three years.
At the time of the incident, PGQW had not established any safe systems of work for sanding with kerosene, nor had the company provided adequate training to its employees.
WorkSafe inspectors had already visited the premises on several occasions, issuing Improvement Notices for providing insufficient training and adequate labelling of hazardous substances.
On Friday, the company was fined $600,000 and ordered to pay more than $2,600 costs in the Perth Magistrates Court, the highest fine imposed under the state’s workplace safety laws.
Mr Shackleton was also fined $50,000 because the offences were attributable to his neglect.
WorkSafe WA commissioner Darren Kavanagh said the case was an unfortunate example of a workplace that did not provide any sort of protection for workers, with a non-flammable kerosene alternative available but not used.
He said the penalty imposed reflected the seriousness of the neglect involved and the terrible injuries the young man suffered.
