Employer fined over fingertip loss

Adelaide-based food manufacturer Beerenberg pleaded guilty to breaching one count of section 19(1) of the Occupational Health, Safety and Welfare Act 1986, in failing to provide and maintain plant in a safe condition and failing to provide safe system of work, in an incident in 2007, where an employee lost her fingertip at the company’s premises while operating a mincer.

The court was told that, at the conclusion of the task, the employee switched off the machine but noticed a piece of tomato hanging from the mincer plate. She went to flick the piece off, but in doing so lost the tip of her index finger.

SafeWork SA’s investigation concluded that the woman’s finger had gone through one of the holes in the mincer plate and come into contact with the cutting blade behind, which was still winding down after the machine was switched off. The fingertip could not be reattached, but the woman returned to work after five weeks.

In his penalty decision, Industrial Magistrate Ardlie acknowledged that, while there was a safe operating procedure written and a warning sign in place, these measures alone were insufficient: “[The measures] did not specifically warn employees of the dangers presented by the moving parts of the mincer after the mincer had been turned off ... the procedures in place did not go far enough.”

Since the incident, the company has fitted a purpose-built distance guard as well as an interlock that shuts the machine down once the guard is removed.

Magistrate Ardlie fined the defendant $9000 and discounted the penalty by 25% to account for the early guilty plea, cooperation, contrition and measures taken since to improve safety.

SafeWork SA says it is well established in workplace safety law that an employer is legally obliged to guard against even inadvertent actions of employees, where reasonably practicable, and any safety analysis of a machine or work process should always take this into account.