Company Fined Over Foreseeable Fatality

Newcastle Herald

Thursday February 8, 2007

By JOANNE McCARTHY

DAVID and Vicki Sullivan, of Aberdeen, take cold comfort from NSW Industrial Court decisions this week imposing $125,000 fines against two companies after the death of their son in 2003.

The court can seek some justice, but it cannot bring their son Jamie back.

"You just can't describe what happens when you're told your child has died," Mr Sullivan said.

"You're dead inside and you never get over it."

Mr Sullivan was unaware of Tuesday's sentences against Anglo Coal and Muswellbrook Crane Services (MCS) until a work colleague made a passing comment and The Herald phoned.

Jamie Sullivan, 25, of Muswellbrook, an employee of MCS, died in November 2003 when an underground mining trailer fell from a crane at Kayuga Mine and he was crushed.

The risk of such an accident was "real, foreseeable and easily addressed by adherence to well-known standards", NSW Industrial Court Judge Haylen found after Anglo Coal and MCS entered guilty pleas to breaches of the Occupational Health and Safety Act.

Both companies failed to ensure safe work practices by contract labour at the mine site.

This left MCS employees, including Mr Sullivan, to conduct a generic risk assessment and carry out a flawed crane lift that ended with his death.

While Anglo Coal was "quite entitled" to have only two employees at Kayuga with up to 250 workers engaged through contractors, "that approach required a heightened attention to the systems of safety adopted by contractors", Judge Hyland found.

"The present case represents another example of employers feeling a lesser sense of obligation in relation to workplace safety because a well-respected and competent expert is engaged by way of contract to perform certain tasks."

An appropriate risk assessment would have "immediately exposed" inadequacies of the lift including "chain shortening, the attachment of more than one sling to a cranehook, the attachment of hooks to non-lifting lugs on the trailer and the unevenness of the load".

Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union NSW secretary Andrew Ferguson said he would be seeking an urgent meeting with Mineral Resources Minister Ian Macdonald after this week's sentences.

"WorkCover NSW recognises Cranesafe, a joint union/employer initiative to improve safety in the mobile crane industry, but it doesn't currently operate at mine sites," Mr Ferguson said.

He was disappointed with the size of the fines which should have been "considerably higher" in the case of Anglo Coal.

"Anglo Coal is a multinational company," Mr Ferguson said.

"Too often the people who've got control sublet work to subcontractors without accepting they still have responsibilities."

© 2007 Newcastle Herald

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