NO WALKWAY

Apprentice tripped and fractured wrist in cramped coolroom – Failing to provide safe system of work and safe plant.

An apprentice tripped over a plastic crate in the coolroom of the butcher’s shop in the David Jones food hall in Sydney. He tried to stop his fall with his left hand and fractured a bone in the wrist.

The employer was prosecuted for breach of the Occupational Health and Safety Act 1983 (NSW) – for failing to provide safe systems of storage and adequate storage equipment (plant) in the coolroom and also for failing to maintain safe means of access to and egress from the coolroom and to provide adequate supervision.

In the Chief Industrial Magistrate’s Court, the butcher pleaded guilty. He said there had been stringent constraints on the amount of space available for meat storage. On the day after a meat delivery, the coolroom was always so full that some meat had to be stored in crates on the floor under the handing carcasses.

After the accident, two new racks with crates for meat had been installed and an additional coolroom had been made available. The butcher’s shop had also carried out risk assessment of the manual handling tasks and employed an OHS consultant.

The Court accepted that the gravity of the offence was low, recorded a conviction and imposed a fine of $2,500.