Edited: S W T Read 18-9-2010
Employers have the ultimate responsibility to keep workers safe, not governments.
Central Queensland company Arrow Property Maintenance was yesterday fined $135,000 over the death of 16-year-old Rueben Barnes in November last year.
The teenager was electrocuted while installing insulation at a house near Rockhampton.
It was one of four fatalities linked to the insulation scheme.
Craig Allen from the Queensland Council of Unions says the company needs to stop passing the buck.
"As the court said, we're not in the industrial revolution era, we are in the 21st century," he said.
"There is an expectation of communities that workers come home alive after they go to work each day.
Rueben BarnesHow many untrained people were killed installing home insulation.
The greed of these companies is unbelievable.
The press in this country blamed Peter Garret. They did not do any investigative journalism whatsoever, if they had we may have saved some lives.
We will see in the coming months that most, if not all these deaths were caused by people wanting to make a fast buck. Using cheap untrained labour.
Some of these companies or their principles should be charged with manslaughter.
A young person has paid the ultimate price for doing a days work, someone should be prosecuted as an example.
The insulation did not kill him it was the sheer negligence of the employer.
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