OSHA Calls for Retail Crowd Management Measures

OSHA is encouraging retail outlets to take precautions to protect workers against injury during major sales events such as Black Friday.

Employers Must Protect Workers against Sunburn

No matter how often health agencies drum away at the message of wearing sunscreen and hats, the message often seems to fall on deaf, sunburned ears. People mistakenly continue to associate a suntan with good health and vitality. That’s their business, right?

How to Balance Safety with Human Rights

Canadian health and safety legislation places a high standard upon employers to ensure the safety, health and welfare of all of their workers.

Injured Worker Who Was Fired Ordered Reinstated

It’s not smart, but definitely not that unusual, for a company to attempt to fire a worker for reporting a safety concern. But an incident in Tennessee is a little different, in that a worker was fired for refusing to continue working after he hurt himself on the job.

Transit Ticket Collector Injured During Robbery Attempt

A Toronto Transit System (TTS) ticket collector suffered life-threatening injuries after he was shot in the neck and shoulder area during a recent robbery attempt.

Construction Supervisor Fined for Trenching Violation

A Saskatoon, SK, construction supervisor has been fined more than $7,000 after pleading guilty to an Occupational Health and Safety (OSH) Act charge related to failure to provide competent and sufficient supervision to workers.

Construction Superintendent Sentenced for Misleading Investigators

A construction site superintendent from South Dakota has been sentenced to six months’ house detention with electronic monitoring for willfully violating an Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) regulation with regard to the fatal fall of one of his workers.

The 29-year-old victim, Carl Beck, fell 42 feet (nearly 13 meters) while helping install a motel roof in the Pittsburgh, PA, area in 2009.

Superintendent Robert Christopher Kennedy, 60, pleaded guilty to a charge of failure to protect employees with anchored safety lines attached to harnesses. He also directed another person to put fall protection on the roof after the fatality, to make it look as though fall protection measures had been in place prior to Beck’s fall.

When an OSHA investigator arrived o

n the job site to interview Kennedy about the death, Kennedy misled him to believe that fall protection was properly secured to the roof before the accident occurred, by using pictures of the roof taken after the fall protection gear was placed there.

Christopher Franc, of C.A. Franc Construction—the company for which Beck worked, was fined $539,000 by OSHA. Franc himself was sentenced to three years’ probation, including six months of home detention. He was also ordered to cover Beck’s funeral expenses.

Ten Ways to Get in Trouble with OSHA: Part 2

Last month, we presented the first five of Washington, DC Attorney Arthur Sapper’s 10 Ways to Get in Trouble with OSHA. Here are the last five recordkeeping errors or misconceptions that can land you in trouble with OSHA, along with five important missteps that can lead to willful recordkeeping citations.

Cal/OSHA Issues Confined Space Hazard Alert

California’s Department of Industrial Relations’ Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA) has issued a confined space hazard alert as part of a year-long statewide special emphasis initiative to focus attention on preventing worker deaths and injuries in confined spaces.

OSHA Issues $3 Million Plus in Proposed Fines

OSHA has come down heavily on a company, alleging that workers at two plants were willfully exposed to amputation hazards in an effort to boost production at the expense of safety.

Whitesell Corporation, based in Muscle Shoals, AL, has been issued 72 alleged health and safety violations carrying proposed penalties totaling $3,071,500.

“Whitesell willfully tampered with the safety mechanisms of its hydraulic forging presses at its Tuscumbia (Alabama) plant to speed up production, resulting in the amputation of a worker’s hand,” says Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis.

Among 13 citations issued to the Tuscumbia plant are allegations of willful failure to develop and utilize lockout/tagout procedures of energy sources for employees engaged in maintenance activities on hydraulic forging presses and willful bypassing of a safety feature intended to protect workers. Serious citations were issued for an alleged lack of machine guarding, electrical hazards and failure to provide engineering or administrative controls for workers exposed to high noise hazards and failure to provide audiograms for those employees.

Whitesell’s Muscle Shoals plant has been issued numerous willful and serious citations, including willful failure to develop and utilize lockout/tagout procedures for the plant’s mechanical forging presses and failure to lock out mechanical forging presses when dies are changed or maintenance is performed.

Other alleged violations at Muscle Shoals include obstructed exit routes, machine guarding, electrical and noise hazards and a lack of hazard communication.