Brewer pleads guilty to workplace safety charges

25 March 2008

Fosters Australia Limited pleaded guilty this morning to two workplace safety charges following the death of a worker on 13 April 2006. 

The charges were laid under the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004.

Magistrate Barbara Cottrell was told a Wantirna man was crushed between a handrail and the door of a machine which took empty bottles from pallets before they were filled with beer at the company’s Abbotsford plant.

A plea hearing is scheduled for 24 July 2008 at the Melbourne County Court.  

The charges:

 1: Failure to provide or maintain plant or systems of work that were so far as reasonably practicable safe and without risks to health contrary to section 21(1)&(2)(a) of the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004.  

2: Failure to provide such information, instruction and supervision as was necessary to employees to enable those persons to perform their work in a way that was safe and without risks to health contrary to section 21(1)&(2)(e) of the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004.