Personal Liability of the UWA Safety and Health Representatives

Should concern be raised about the personal liability of elected Safety and Health Representatives in the event that a member of their department/section sustaining an injury or disease at work. This instance is taken into account in the Western Australian Occupational Safety and Health Act (1984), Section 33.3 page 62 states:

"A safety and health representative incurs no civil liability arising from his or her performance of, or his or her failure to perform, any function of a safety and health representative under this Act".

However this only applies to their duties as Safety and Health Representatives and they still owe a duty of care to themselves, their fellow employees and any staff that they supervise. For a legal action against a staff member to proceed, it must be shown that they owed a duty of care to the potential plaintiff, that they had breached that duty of care and that the breach was a direct cause of the damage.