J & A Referrals Pty Ltd has been convicted and fined $12,000 for providing information which they knew to be false or misleading, frustrating the investigative process undertaken by WorkSafe into an incident that resulted in a serious injury.
In November 2023 J & A Referrals engaged workers to install framing for the construction of two townhouses in Springvale. On the day of the incident three workers were performing tasks on the second level of a townhouse with no fall protection in place. One worker fell through a stair void, cutting their left wrist on hoop iron and landing on their back. The worker was treated in hospital for a left forearm degloving, along with other serious injuries.
During the WorkSafe investigation the injured worker advised that they had not been inducted to the workplace, but that a month after the incident the Director of J & A Referrals asked him to sign a document, saying that it was for the induction and that it needed to be back dated to a month before the incident. Another worker on the site also could not recall being inducted but was asked by the Director to sign a backdated document saying that he had been inducted.
When asked by the WorkSafe investigator about the dates on the induction forms the Director confirmed that they were ‘true and correct’.
Read more: Prosecution Result Summaries and Enforceable Undertakings | WorkSafe Victoria