Page 31 - Occupational Health & Safety, April 2018

RECENT HAND PROTECTION ENFORCEMENT ACTIONS
OSHA cited fiberglass pipe manufacturer RPS Composites Alabama Inc. in February 2018 for safety and health violations af- ter an employee suffered a finger amputation. The agency reported that the company faces $74,833 in proposed penalties. OSHA investigators determined that due to a lack of machine guarding, an employee in Mobile, Ala., had his safety-gloved
hand pulled into a pipe-winding machine, resulting in the amputation. OSHA cited the Mobile manufacturer for 10 serious and two other-than-serious violations for exposing employees to struck-by and caught-in hazards by failing to install proper machine guarding; failing to train employees on how to control energy sources; and allowing combustible dust to accumulate.
Overseas, a $2.64 million fine was among the noteworthy penalties the Health and Safety Executive has issued under a new sentencing guideline in the United Kingdom that took effect in February 2016. Two years later, Matthew Breakell and Charlotte Miles, associate and solicitor at DAC Beachcroft, reported in an article on the IOSH website that high fines are having the desired effect and are expected to continue. “It is two years since the implementation of the UK Sentencing Council’s Definitive Guideline for the Sentencing of Health and Safety Offences, Corporate Manslaughter and Food Safety and Hygiene Offences. In 2017 we saw, as predicted, that the courts weren’t shy about imposing high fines for organisa- tions and custodial sentences for individuals for breaching health and safety legislation,” they wrote, adding that the main focus of the guideline is to ensure fines bring home to both management and shareholders the need to comply with health and safety regulations. In 2015/16, fines for health and safety offenses were £38.8 million, but this climbed to £69.9 million in 2016/17. “There is no doubt that the sharp increase in fines over the past two years is the subject of regular discussion in boardrooms up and down the country,” they reported.
Their article listed a handful of the notable fines in 2017, including Warburtons Ltd, which was fined £1.9m (equivalent to $2.64 million in U.S. dollars) in July 2017 because an agency worker was cleaning parts of the bread line at a company site and his arm became trapped between two conveyor belts, leaving him with friction burns that required skin grafts.
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Circle 8 on card.
— Jerry Laws, OH&S editor