New Zealand officials recently spent time investigating a pair of workplace injuries, one of which led to a fatality.
In one incident, meat processor Riverlands Eltham Ltd was fined $42,500 and ordered to pay reparations to a staff member of $12,500 following a workplace injury in which the staff member lost the end of his right index finger.
The company was convicted in the New Plymouth District Court at a hearing in December of 2013 on one charge of failing to take all practicable steps to ensure the safety of the employee while at work and sentenced today at the same court.
The employee had his finger caught in a conveyor while he was collecting blood from slaughtered animals. In convicting the company last year, Judge Max Courtney said that notwithstanding the victim’s action in putting his hand on the conveyor, the company did not take all practicable steps to protect him by ensuring the machine was guarded, that it had a start warning system and that it had an emergency stop button in an accessible position.
“Unfortunately, there’s a worker who has been unnecessarily injured because Riverlands Eltham had not done this work – and it is notable that on the day of the accident the company installed a guard on the machine,” Chief Inspector Investigations Keith Stewart said.
According to Stewart, “It was too little too late for the worker.
“Relying on the old adage ‘it has not happened before’ as a justification for not taking foreseeable safety steps is proven by this case to be bad safety and business judgement.”
Forest Sector Needs to Change Its Behavior
Meantime, WorkSafe New Zealand recently said that a death and a serious injury in the forest sector are deeply saddening.
WorkSafe NZ General Manager Health and Safety Operations Ona de Rooy said after delivering an appalling safety record in 2013, to have a death just 16 days into the New Year demonstrates just how much this sector needs to change its behavior.
“We have identified an alarming rate of safety non-compliance amongst cable logging operators – nearly half of the 162 we’ve visited weren’t operating in compliance with the industry code and we had to take 203 enforcement actions to force those operators to comply. We had to shut 15 of them down they were so dangerous.
“We are so concerned at this level of unsafe practice that we have sought meetings with individual forest owners to make very clear to them that they have significant responsibilities under the Health and Safety in Employment Act. We will want to see their safety plans for the contractor crews demonstrate active management of safety standards. If they are deficient, we will be holding them to account.”
According to de Rooy, the regulator cannot be solely responsible for making sure this industry is safe.
“We will use every power available to us to push this industry to safer operations. But until every forest owner, every contractor, their national associations, worker representatives and the workers themselves take personal responsibility for operating safely, the culture in this industry will not change and more families and communities will be grieving over a dead or injured forestry worker,” de Rooy added.
Author Kori Shafer-Stack, Editor, Amaxx Risk Solutions, Inc. is an expert in post-injury response procedures and part of the Amaxx team helping companies reduce their workers compensation costs by 20% to 50%. www.reduceyourworkerscomp.com. Contact: kstack@reduceyourworkerscomp.com.
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