The Context
In December 2024, a Chinese migrant worker died at an Auckland aluminium company’s warehouse. He was loading beams into racking above two metres when he fell from a scissor lift. WorkSafe has now laid a charge under the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015. The regulator’s statement is blunt: the PCBU failed its duty, exposing workers to a risk of death. This is not just a tragic accident. It is a strategic failure of operational control. The company’s core process—warehousing—has killed someone. The legal machinery is now in motion, with a first hearing pending at the North Shore District Court.
The Risk
Directors, your personal liability is triggered here. Under Section 44 of the HSWA 2015, an officer must exercise due diligence to ensure the PCBU complies with its duties. This is not a passive role. Due diligence means proactively understanding your operations, verifying controls are in place, and ensuring resources are allocated. A fatality during a routine task like loading racking is prima facie evidence of a systemic governance failure. WorkSafe’s Brad Duggan called out the basics: \”When those basics slip, the consequences can be catastrophic.\” The court will ask what you, as a Director, did to prevent that slip. A successful prosecution can lead to personal fines of up to $600,000 and up to five years’ imprisonment. The reputational incineration is a separate, permanent penalty.
The Control
Your audit committee reports are worthless if a worker is dead. Governance is the control of catastrophic risk. Stop reviewing lag indicators and start interrogating the reality of high-risk routine work. This case is about a fundamental operational strategy—material handling—that was fatally flawed. You must move beyond policy and into practice.
For our high-risk routine tasks, like working at height, what is the specific evidence (not assurance) that the controls we have designed are being followed by every worker, every shift?
When did the board last receive a detailed, unvarnished report on the actual conditions and behaviours observed on our warehouse or factory floor, rather than a summary of incident statistics?
How do we verify that our safety training and supervision for migrant workers, who may face language or cultural barriers, is effective and understood, not just legally documented?