Patrick Stevedores has been fined nearly half a million dollars for threatening workers who raised safety concerns. Workers objected to a demand that they move steel coils weighing more than the safe limit for the forklift. In response, the port operations manager launched a torrent of abuse and threatened to sack and blacklist them: “I’m going to get that c***… You don’t want to go down that track. You’ll be on a list — a list you don’t want to be on. One by one we’ll put you on there if you don’t do as you’re told.” And the worst thing about it? The incident occurred in 2009, and the manager “knew that a worker had been killed in an accident with a coil in 2007.” (WorkSafe explained the long delay as being “because it was heavily contested and a previous trial was abandoned when the jury was unable to reach a verdict”.)
7 February 2019