The rest of the article can be found
http://www.cpa.org.au/guardian/2014/1630/07-abbott-wants.html
Last month two workers were injured when scaffolding at a construction site in Mascot, Sydney collapsed. They rode the falling materials ten metres to the ground and were taken to hospital, lucky to be alive. The falling scaffolding brought down power lines and fell across the footpath and one lane of the road. It was only luck that no pedestrians or motorists were hit in this busy street.
According to the Construction division of the CFMEU, there was a stoppage by workers at that site just before Christmas over safety concerns with the scaffolding. It was one of two serious accidents on construction sites in Sydney last month. The other involved a concrete pour, with the pump truck tipping over the next day. Luck alone saw no one killed or injured.
In January, a construction worker died in a fall at the controversial Lend Lease site at Barangaroo in Sydney. Reports indicate that he fell 30 metres from scaffolding. Last August a 19-year-old was driving an excavator on a site in Linfield, Sydney, when a metal rod flew up and became lodged in his head. In the same month a slab of concrete fell from a crane onto a worker causing back injuries at an inner-Sydney site. A 22-year-old worker lost his life when he was crushed by metal beams at a demolition site.
The list continues of “accidents”, not just in Sydney but on construction sites across Australia.
One of the most notorious sites is the Royal Adelaide Hospital which has been riddled with safety issues. Fifty sheets of wood fell more than two metres onto decking in one incident as a crane lost its load in November last year. It is sheer luck that no one was on the deck underneath. It was the second crane malfunction in one month.
It is not hard to find safety breaches. It is not uncommon to see unsafe scaffolding, sites not locked after hours, workers wearing runners or no hard hat, dust not hosed down, rubbish scattered along walkways, ladders not secured, and so on. For examples, visit hcfmeunsw.asn.au and click on photo galleries, Safety Shockers!.
In a number of the cases cited above, the CFMEU had previously warned employers of dangers, had called stop work meetings or made demands for inspections and engineers’ reports. But building contractors and companies act with impunity. State inspection authorities are grossly under-staffed and not carrying out the necessary inspections or enforcing health and safety regulations.
