The $150,000 fine plus $8000 reparations and $1225 costs imposed on Wallace Murray Electrical Ltd for failing to ensure the safety of an electrician working for the company provides a chilling proof of the difference between the way safety is regulated under the Health and safety at Work Act (HSWA) and the Electricity Act and its regulations.
The action against Wallace Murray Electrical, an Invercargill-based electrical contractor was taken by the workplace regulator, WorkSafe New Zealand, under HSWA and not by the electrical regulator, WorkSafe, for a breach of the Electricity Regulations.
The action was a result of industrial electrical work during the replacement of an old switchboard where the electrician’s hands were partially exposed to a reflected 400 V arc flash that occurred in a segregated live area at the bottom of the old board. (See page 10)
According to the manager of Wallace Murray Electrical, Hugh Murray, during WorkSafe’s investigation of the accident, he defended his company’s actions saying that the work was carried out in compliance with the Electricity Regulations, but the WorkSafe investigator dismissed his explanation.
“The investigator said I was wrong because we had to have health and safety procedures in place first and the regulations had to come under the procedures,” says Murray.
“I was in disbelief with his answer because nowhere in the Electricity Regulations is an employer required to design specific procedures for every bit of electrical work electricians do.”
And this is where workplace generic law under HSWA takes almost the opposite approach to electricity law. HSWA assumes that workers are safety incompetent and have to be supervised and directed on all things in relation to work. The failure of a PCBU to provide safety procedures is treated as a crime committed by the employer against the worker.