Employment and Labor Law

Contact: Matthew Payten; Carter Newell (Queensland, Australia)

It is incumbent upon employers under both the common law and statute to reasonably minimise the risk of injury to employees in the performance of work. Current iterations of work health and safety laws extend this general duty and explicitly require a person conducting a business or undertaking to ensure, as far as reasonably practicable, that ‘the health of workers and the conditions at the workplace are monitored for the purpose of preventing illness or injury of workers arising from the conduct of the business or undertaking’.¹ This newsletter briefly reviews the law regarding the medical assessment of workers, and considers two recent decisions – one in the context of an individual and the other an attempt to implement a broad mandatory health assessment program.

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