Your browser version is no longer supported, so you may experience issues while using this site.
Please upgrade to a current browser to enjoy the best experience.
Issue 69
This month saw the launch of WorkSafe’s digital hotline for reporting concerns about the overuse of road cones. We look at the pilot scheme and the role temporary traffic management and road cones have in keeping the public and workers safe. In addition, we cover the new WorkSafe guidance on managing psychosocial risks and three Australian prosecutions for bullying and harassment of workers. In other statutory liability news, we also have an article about three recent Resource Management Act prosecutions of dairy farmers for the unlawful discharge of diary and other effluent.
“Don’t worry; I’m sure these Earthlings
will welcome us with open arms…”
Hotline to report errant road cones launched by WorkSafe
WorkSafe New Zealand has launched its tipline to report excessive road cone use. Concerns from anywhere in New Zealand can now be sent to WorkSafe through a digital hotline on the WorkSafe website.
The hotline is part of a 12-month pilot resulting from work health and safety reforms announced by the Government to tackle overcompliance in temporary traffic management. WorkSafe’s Chief Executive, Sharon Thompson, said that the pilot aims to reduce unnecessary cones on the road. “While cones are primarily there to manage the speed and flow of traffic and help keep everyone safe, there can be times when usage is excessive. We will engage with those involved with temporary traffic management and provide information to influence them to take a more risk-based approach to the use of cones on the road,” Ms Thompson said.
WorkSafe said it will assess reports to determine the appropriate response. This could include contact with those responsible for the roadwork site, sending an inspector out, and educating the parties involved on what the law and guidance is.
Road cones are widely used in temporary traffic management (TTM). TTM primarily exists to protect the public and workers. It is needed for road construction activities, but also other work that impacts road users, such as public events, tree work near the road, and installing cables and pipes.
Anyone who plans to do work that alters the normal operating conditions of the road corridor must have a traffic management plan approved by the road controlling authority. The layout of road cones should reflect what has been outlined in the traffic management plan.
WorkSafe says it is important to understand the purpose of road cones is to keep the public and workers safe around a work site. Between 2019 and 2023, there were 42 fatal and 314 serious injury crashes at sites where there was a temporary speed limit in place. NZTA figures suggest that most deaths and serious injuries at roadwork sites are road users - approximately 95%. Road workers are involved in approximately 5% of road work site deaths and serious injuries.
WorkSafe publishes comprehensive new guidance on managing psychosocial risks
Exposure to psychosocial hazards can lead to serious health impacts such as mental illness, anxiety, depression, fatigue, burnout, cardiovascular disease and musculoskeletal disorders. It can also cause social harms such as substance use/abuse and conflict between work and family life. At its most severe, recent research has found that between 2017 and 2021, 246 suicides met the criteria of a potential work-related suicide and 197 suicides met the criteria of an actual work-related suicide.
Psychosocial risk refers to the likelihood that a psychosocial hazard will cause harm. Workers may face more than one hazard at the same time, and these hazards can interact or make each other worse.
WorkSafe says that it may intervene when a PCBU, group of PCBUs, or sector has a persistent pattern of serious harm or poorly managed serious work-related psychosocial risks. It says it is unlikely to intervene in one-off or individual cases. The Government has also announced that proposed health and safety reforms will mean small businesses will not have to have a psychosocial harm policy in place.
However, other government agencies may also become involved in allegations of psychosocial harm. Verbal or emotional mistreatment at work may be treated as an employment matter and involve MBIE and ultimately the Employment Relations Authority. If discrimination (for example, based on race, disability, sexual orientation, or gender) causes mental harm to workers, it may fall under the Human Rights Act and involve the Human Rights Commission.
Across the Tasman, in Victoria, Australia, the failure to manage the risks of psychosocial harm to workers has led to three recent prosecutions under that State’s health and safety legislation. A toy company was sentenced to a fine of $100,000 over the failure to manage sexual harassment risk at work after a worker made a series of allegations of inappropriate behaviour at the workplace, including comments and text messages from one of the company's directors that pried into her personal life and were of a sexual nature. A WorkSafe Victoria investigation revealed that at the time the company had no formal system in place to identify, prevent, manage, investigate or respond to inappropriate behaviours in the workplace.
WorkSafe Victoria also successfully prosecuted an electrical contracting company for failing to reduce the risk of psychological injury by not bullying, sexually harassing or directing work-related gendered violence at an apprentice, leading to a $15,000 fine. In addition, a $90,000 fine was given to a painting company following allegations of sexual harassment from a worker.
WorkSafe New Zealand has a suite of guidance on mentally healthy work and managing psychosocial hazards to assist businesses to develop appropriate policies and procedures.
Six-metre fall leads to prosecution of Wellington roofing company
A Wellington roofing company was sentenced this month after a worker sustained critical injuries when he fell six metres from a slippery, unsafe rooftop in April 2023. The company was fined $40,000 and ordered to pay reparations of $77,456.
The 38-year-old victim, who had only been in the job for two months, had no experience or training in working at height when he fell from a commercial rooftop in central Wellington. Conditions were rainy at the time and the iron roof was new and had cleaning product on it.
As a result of the fall, the victim spent six months in hospital recovering from a traumatic brain injury and multiple broken bones. The father of five still lives with continuous pain and has been unable to work since.
The WorkSafe investigation found there was only limited edge protection on the roof. In its absence, a harness system should have been used to keep workers safe - but was not. In any event, WorkSafe found that the victim had no formal training on the use of a harness or roof-anchors.
The victim’s employer was unable to provide WorkSafe with any policies, or risk/hazard identification and control process to prove it had a safe system of work in place.
Falls from height are a well-known and obvious risk. WorkSafe says the best controls are those that don’t require active judgement by a worker. This includes solutions such as edge protection or scaffolding. If a worker slips or missteps, there is a physical barrier to prevent the fall off the edge. WorkSafe has extensive guidance on working safely at height including this good practice publication for working on roofs.
Three recent prosecutions for RMA breaches result in fines and community service for dairy farmers
Three dairy farmers have recently been sentenced for breaches of the Resource Management Act (RMA) after the unlawful discharge of diary and other effluent. One of the Councils involved commented that it is a timely reminder to all farmers that there needs to be adequate effluent infrastructure and good effluent management systems on every farm.
In March, a Southland man was sentenced to a $130,000 fine in the Gore District Court after he admitted discharging leachate from farm tailings, leachate from sileage, and dairy effluent onto land in circumstances where it could enter water in February 2024.
Environment Southland said the impact of the event was among the most serious the team had investigated. The bodies of more than 2,500 eels were collected in a 10km clean-up zone. The Low Burn stream was severely impacted as a result. It could take up to ten years for the biological communities to repopulate the stream and the ecosystem to fully recover.
In May and June, two Waikato farmers were also sentenced under the RMA. A farm manager was convicted, fined $5,000 and sentenced to 140 hours
community work for the unlawful discharge of dairy effluent into a drain network in May 2024. Council officers had responded to a complaint about dairy effluent in the rural drainage system on the Hauraki Plains. They found an effluent irrigator on a farm had stalled causing effluent to flow into a nearby drain. The travelling irrigator had come to the end of its run and had been left to irrigate in the same location for up to a week. The farmer said he was aware the irrigator had come to the end of its run but had simply not got around to shifting it in that week, which the Judge found was “highly careless.”
A Waikato sharemilker was also convicted, fined $40,000 and sentenced to 140 hours community work for unlawful discharges of dairy effluent into a tributary of the Puniu River, near Te Awamutu. In 2022, council compliance officers conducted three inspections of the farm’s effluent system. During two inspections they found effluent storage ponds overflowing. On another occasion they found effluent ponding and runoff from an irrigator. An abatement notice was also being breached. The Council said the farm effluent ponds were inadequate and posed a real risk to the environment.
This newsletter is published as part of Vero Liability’s commitment to supporting better work health and safety outcomes for all New Zealanders. We want everyone to go home safe.
Vero Liability provides a full range of liability insurance products suitable for almost any business or operation in New Zealand. Our extensive range of liability products include Professional Indemnity, Directors and Officers Liability, Public and Products Liability, Statutory Liability, LegalEdge and other specialty products. We support these products with an experienced team of insurance underwriters, specialist claims lawyers and managers to ensure our policyholders get early and effective help with unexpected legal issues.
For more information on VL’s specialist liability insurance products, including our statutory liability cover for non-deliberate health and safety breaches, visit our website.
