Topic: Occupational health and safety management
1000 words, About South australia occupational health and safety welfare act the writer has to be familiar with australia’s welfare act to write this paper.
Question 1 contains most of the marks so it has to contain about 650 the writer can balance them but has to focus on the first question as 60% of the marks is on it. words 8 references 3 law cases that suit the case study and 4 academic books and one reference should be the (The Occupational Health Safety and Welfare Act, 1986 (SA) ) this website contains south australias welfare acts and legislation:(www.safework.sa.gov.au )
Case study:
A safety inspector was carrying out an inspection at a local hotel. In the kitchen he noted a garbage disposal machine which was not guarded. This meant an operator could insert their arm into the machine. The inspector instructs the business owner Fred to take the machine “out of service” until it is guarded. Fred immediately tells Jeff, a pantry hand, to put an “out of service tag” on the machine and notifies the maintenance manager to isolate the electricity (so the blade will not work) until a guard is installed.
The maintenance department electrically isolate the machine but do not get round to putting a guard on. They don’t see it as a priority as “no ones ever been hurt by the machine before”. In the meantime the “out of service tag” gets really dirty and is removed for cleaning. An electrician doing some general testing notes the disconnection and reconnects the machine.
Two weeks later Pete finds the machine blocked, he had been away on holidays and was not aware it was out of service. He sticks a spoon into it, when the spoon breaks he tries to grab onto it, but instead his hand is severely cut by the machine.
Assignment questions to assignment questions to discuss:
1. Refer to the employer’s duty of care in the Occupational Health Safety and Welfare legislation of your jurisdiction. assignment questions to discuss with specific reference to the legislation if you consider Fred to have breached the employer’s duty of care?
2.What management systems would you recommend Fred should put in place to escape liability?
3. Could anybody else be liable? Why?