A HUNTER company has been fined $240,000 for “wholly disregarding” the safety of a teenage work experience student who suffered permanent eye damage after welding for up to five hours without a safety visor.
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The school student, 15, suffered retinal thermal burns, or “flash burns”, to both of his eyes whilst making 37 welds on his first morning of work experience at the Muswellbrook firm Tho Services Limited in 2013.
The NSW Court of Criminal Appeal overturned a decision not to convict and fine Tho Services, which is now in liquidation, over the 2013 incident where the teen was not told of the need to use the UV darkening lens during an induction.
Instead, and sometimes within a few metres of his supervisor, the youth performed 37 welds between 8am and 1pm before a fellow worker discovered him not using the safety visor.
The boy was off school for six weeks, needed large font for reading, had to dim the brightness on his mobile phone while holding it close to him, and could not play cricket or football because he could not see the ball.
When he returned to school he required visual aids to assist him completing classroom activities and has been left with a 75 percent bilateral visual incapacity.
In granting a State Govenrment appeal over the lack of conviction and fine, Justice Ian Harrison found the “inescapable conclusion” that the company had failed “in an egregious fashion” to supervise the teen “while he was directly exposed to the avoidable and preventable risk of serious injury’’.
“The vast range of induction and supervising protocols adopted by the respondent or in force at its premises serves not to relieve the respondent of its responsibility for safety but on the contrary powerfully reinforces the extent to which the respondent failed to put them into practical effect,’’ Justice Harrison found.
The teen had turned up for his first day of work experience and had told a supervisor during a formal induction of the workplace that he had welded before at school.
However, the visors used at his school were all fitted with the UV protectors compared to Tho Services’ helmets which had a visor which could be flipped up and down.
By 1pm, the boy had told his supervisor his eyes were “going blurry” and the welding lights were “very bright”.
His supervisor check his helmet and told him to continue.
Some 80 minutes later, another employee saw the boy welding with the visor still up.
When asked why he was welding with the visor up, the teen said he did not know he had to wear the visor down and had been welding with the visor up the entire day.
He also said that the visor was too dark see through, before he was told that once he started welding he would have been able to see through the visor.
The teen’s vision was still blurry the following day when he came back for the second day of his work experience, where he could not read signs and could not find his way around the workshop.
He was sent for tests were the damage was discovered.
“I consider that the offence falls above the mid-range of objective seriousness for matters of its kind,’’ Justice Harrison said.
“The victim was young and otherwise vulnerable.
“The injuries sustained by him were permanent and presumably devastating.
“The respondent wholly disregarded his safety over an extended period.
“In that context, the injuries sustained were the direct result of a continuing failure by the respondent’s employees to appreciate what was occurring and were not the result of an occasional act of negligence or momentary inattention.
“The breaches represent a systemic failure of all protocols and induction procedures that were formulated to prevent injury.’’
