A smashing way to die

The death of a worker at Pilkingtons Glass in Dandenong reinforces the need for safe work practices when working with glass.

Common injuries in the workplaces include:

• Crushing under the weight of a collapsed heavy glass sheet or a pile of glass sheets
• Falls from heights while setting glass in windows, on walls or ceilings, resulting in heavy traumas and sometimes death
• Slips, trips and falls on wet, slippery and greasy floors, while moving glass sheets
• Severe cuts to hands and crushing of toes, caused by sharp edges of glass sheets during their cutting, moving, setting, and other handling operations, or as a result of stepping on sharp glass shards.

Your employer must provide you with correct tools, protective clothing and instructions on how to use safe lifting and moving techniques for heavy or awkward loads and how to use mechanical aids to assist in lifting.

It is not good enough for workers to be lucky, like two workers recently were on a Probuild Constructions job at Flemington Racecourse. They were while lifting a 420-kilogram glass panel from a wooden crate when the lifter gave way. The workers escaped serious injury only because the glass panel was not far off the ground.