Goodman Fielder fined $90,000 after worker’s arm crushed in machine

Goodman Fielder Consumer Foods has been convicted and fined $90,000 over an incident at its Pampas factory in West Footscray which left a worker with serious and permanent injuries to his arm after it was crushed in a machine.

The company pleaded guilty to failing to provide safe plant and failing to provide proper training. The injured worker was an employee of labour hire company Skilled Group and had been assigned to work at the company’s Pampas factory for two years prior to the incident on 5 September 2009. Skilled Group was convicted and fined $50,000 in November last year in relation to the same incident.

The court was told the worker was cleaning a dough extruder when it suddenly activated, trapping the man’s arm in the machine.

“Properly guarding machines is a fundamental safety requirement that employers must act on to avoid incidents like this from happening,” said WorkSafe Victoria’s General Manager for Health and Safety Operations, Lisa Sturzenegger. An investigation found the worker was not adequately trained in how to operate the machine’s controls, which led to him failing to properly de-activate the machine before cleaning it.

Informal training was carried out ‘on the job’ by other workers, but they did not follow a safe and consistent approach. The investigation also found the machine was inadequately guarded; its plastic guard had a 10 cm gap, big enough for the worker to put his arm through.

“Businesses have to make sure moving parts of a machine have proper guards or physical barriers fitted,” Sturzenegger said.

“On top of this, workers responsible for cleaning or servicing machines need to be properly trained in how to deactivate them. As this incident has shown, inadequately training staff can have distressing consequences for all involved.”