Labor's push to criminalise industrial manslaughter

At present, Tasmania is the only Australian jurisdiction that does not have specific industrial manslaughter legislation.

The federal government introduced similar legislation to parliament last year for industrial manslaughter to incur a maximum penalty of 25 years' jail for an individual convicted of the offence and fines of up to $18 million for body corporates.

Tasmanian Labor's workplace relations spokeswoman Sarah Lovell said state-based laws would force employers to pull their weight to ensure they had safe workplaces.

"Every worker deserves to come home safely, but with 87 work-related fatalities recorded in Tasmania over the past decade, we sadly know this isn't always the case," she said.

Unions Tasmania secretary Jessica Munday said Tasmanian workers deserved the same protections as their mainland counterparts.

After years of refusing to budge on industrial manslaughter and pointing to the existence of manslaughter under the criminal code as sufficient - all the while knowing no employer has ever been charged with the death of a worker under these laws - the Liberal Government had initiated a consultation process but, like much important work, this is delayed by an early state election," she said.