Cutri Fruit Pty Ltd has been fined $750,000 and a conviction recorded for failing to ensure persons other than employees were not exposed to health and safety risks, after a 70-year-old labour hire worker fell from a tractor of his second shift at the workplace in January 2022. The man sustained serious head injuries and died later that night in hospital.
Workers at Cutri Fruit Pty Ltd were required to travel to different locations at the workplace to pick fruit, which was then placed in bins which sat on two trailers. The trailers were towed in tandem by a tractor.
The trailers were designed and manufactured by Cutri Fruit Pty Ltd to carry double stacked fruit bins, and included horizontal, evenly spaced bars affixed across the top of the drawbars and the areas above the wheels – these ‘platforms’ were designed to assist fruit pickers to empty their picking bags into the fruit bins – they were not designed to carry people.
On the day of the incident four labour hire workers were standing on the two trailers as the tractor drove from the farm to another farm and then along two public roads. After stopping at an intersection, the tractor turned right and two of the workers fell from the rear trailer along with some of the fruit bins. One worker sustained no injuries, but the other worker was seriously injured and flown to a Melbourne hospital where he later died.
The employer failed to eliminate or reduce the risk to workers by providing trailers without platforms and failed to provide directions or procedures for how to travel between picking locations or to provide a safe means of transport.
This workplace fatality occurred just six months before the new Victorian workplace manslaughter legislation came into effect.
Read more: Fruit grower fined $750,000 after picker's fatal fall | WorkSafe Victoria