Gong v AWI Steel Pty Limited [2026] NSWSC 331

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Key takeaways

When considering a host employer’s duty of care, the Court has confirmed that:

• An occupier of premises who controls how labour hire workers perform their tasks owes those workers a duty of care, even if they were hired through another company.
• A principal cannot discharge its safety obligations by delegating inductions to a supervisor who has no safety training and does not fully understand or accurately translate the induction material.

Brief facts

The worker was a Korean-speaking boilermaker/welder. In April 2021 he was injured after working for only a few days at the steel fabrication factory of AWI Steel Pty Ltd (AWI). The worker was the sole employee of Gong Engineering Pty Ltd (Gong Engineering). Gong Engineering contracted to Ebenezer Engineering Pty Ltd (Ebenezer) which supplied workers, including the worker, to AWI.

AWI had engaged Ebenezer to provide labour and to supervise the native Korean speakers it supplied, including the worker. That supervisory role was undertaken at the factory by Mr Gim, a bilingual colleague with no safety training.

AWI had devised the induction process for Ebenezer workers using a document created by its Safety, Quality and Environment Manager. However, Mr Gim did not fully understand the induction document, had only translated parts he considered important, and failed to induct workers in AWI's safe work method statement and manual handling policy.

The accident occurred when Mr Gim instructed the worker to manually lift and flip a very heavy metal plate rather than waiting for the crane. The worker’s case was that he complied with the unsafe working environment because of pressure and threats of dismissal made by Mr Gim, despite believing the plate was too heavy to flip safely. The plate slipped and fell,striking the worker and causing various injuries.

Judgment

The Court found that AWI owed the worker a duty of care. The evidence established that there was one system under which both AWI's own employees and those supplied by Ebenezer were required to work together at its factory, under AWI’s overall control, direction and supervision.

The Court was persuaded that AWI did not safely manage its requirement for manual lifts through the induction it arranged for Ebenezer workers, its safety documents, the training arranged, or by the supervision given. The risk of a metal item which was too heavy to safely lift manually falling and injuring a worker was obvious and not insignificant and could easily have been addressed by use of the crane, or by a team lift. After the accident, AWI installed a second crane.

The worker’s contributory negligence was assessed at 25%, reflecting his own responsibility for safety and his evidence that he had identified the manual lift to be unsafe. As an experienced tradesman, he should have recognised the danger and not attempted the manual lift alone, despite Mr Gim's direction.

Implications

This decision reinforces that a host employer who retains day-to-day control over the work of contractor-supplied labour owes those workers a duty of care equivalent to that owed to direct employees.

Employers with multilingual workforces must ensure that safety inductions are delivered in workers' primary languages by persons with genuine comprehension of the material - not merely translated by a bilingual colleague with no safety training. Having written safety policies on paper will not protect an employer from liability where those policies are not actually put into practice in the workplace.