Under the current law, recruitment agencies who contract out workers to a third party are responsible for occupational health and safety at the contractor's workplace, they are also held liable when an accident occurs.

To my mind this is ridiculous, because the agency is not on site and in many cases wouldn't even be allowed on site.

In a recent case SKILLED Group has been charged, and a host employer fined after an on-hire worker was dragged into an unsafe machine and seriously injured.

SKILLED pleaded guilty to failing to provide safe systems of work, and will appear in court on November 26.

The accident occurred in part, because of a missing safety switch which prevents the machine from operating when some is inside it.

I know that most recruitment agencies who supply blue collar workers on a contract basis do visit sites to try to do the right thing with regard to their WHS responsibilities, but with the best will in the world, any inspection of the site by Skilled could not have prevented this accident. This is something that should have been picked up by the host employer's WHS rep.

I can't help wondering if the current law is doing workers a dis-service by putting the ultimate responsibility for WHS onto the contracting agency who is not in a position to ensure the work environment is safe.

What do others think?