Yahoo Finance Bunnings worker wins $1.25 million payout after suffering life-changing injury
Merchandiser Sarah Jane severely injured her back while working at Bunnings and says she is still suffering today.
Bunnings has been forced to make a major payout to a contractor worker who was seriously injured on the job.
Sarah Jane’s six-year ordeal started in 2018 when she was working as a merchandiser for Neutrog at Seven Hills Bunnings in Western Sydney.
The then 31-year-old severely injured her back when she knelt down to lift and drag forward a bucket of fertiliser to the front of a pallet. Each bucket weighed between 10.8 and 11.2 kilograms.
This comes as a young worker hit out against "disrespectful" customer behaviour in store, and a warning was issued for customers being offered $500.
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Jane's case has gone before the NSW Supreme Court, with Bunnings agreeing to a settlement of $750,000 plus legal costs, which are reportedly about $500,000 but are yet to be determined. Neutrog, who Jane was employed through, has been ordered to contribute to the costs.
Bunnings said they “knew or ought to have known” the foreseeable risk when they failed to train Jane to use a pallet jack, which could have prevented her injury.
Jane received training through a Bunnings module but was not told pallet jacks were available to help her move stock forward.
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These jacks are regularly used by Bunnings’ own workers, however, court documents note Bunnings “did not apply the same rigour or adopt the same precautions for the merchandisers, who were nonetheless subject to Bunnings control and oversight”.
Jane says she still suffers from the back injury and it has affected her ability to parent her kids.
“It’s a win but it doesn’t really feel like a win,” the mum-of-two told news.com.au. “Not just everything that they’ve put me through, but just the injury itself, and how much it’s changed my life and how much I’ve missed out on with my kids when they were young.”
Jane’s lawyers, Turner Freeman, said there was a lot of pushback from Bunnings regarding the case, with the hardware chain reportedly only coming to the table in the past few weeks.
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