An Employers ‘duty of care’- involving OH&S (Australia)?
I understand an employers ‘duty of care’, but what about those employees who put themselves in risk by the nature of their job? For example, a trapeze artist is injured, yet the employer did everything in their power to ensure that the employee was as safe as possible (eg: installing safety nes and such). The employee could not go through common law to prove negligence because of this, but would the employer still pay them compensation for their injury, or would they just go through Workers Compensation?
…maybe I am confused about the role of the employer. If they did everything foreseeable to prevent an injury, would they have to pay compensation or is Workers Compensation just enough?
Are you from NSW? If so, the relevant act you want to look at is the Civil Liability Act 2002:
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/nsw/consol_act/cla2002161/
If the risk was unforeseeable (as you have already stated) then there is no liability for the employer under the CLA.
What type of injury was it? How did it occur? If it occurred due to malfunctioning equipment, for example, there still could be a foreseeable risk present. It depends on the circumstances.
If liability under common law cannot be established, then it is unlikely that the employer will compensate (and they are not obliged to do so). Therefore Workers Compensation seems like the most viable option.
Its workers compensation.
But the Employers workers compensation insurance premium goes up for the Employer, since a claim has been made on their worksite.
workers comp (regardless of what state you are talking about)
for them to have to pay compensation, they would have had to have been negligent in some way, or violated another tort.