Injuries from moving parts see employers fined

Three South Australian companies were recently convicted and collectively fined over $50,000 for injuries sustained by employees of each of the companies.

All three parties had earlier pleaded guilty to breaches of the Occupational Health Safety and Welfare Act 1986, in failing to provide safe systems of work, failing to provide plant in a safe condition and, in one case, failing to provide adequate instruction and training.

Coromandel Valley Construction Enterprises was convicted and fined $26,000 over a 2007 incident at a construction site where an apprentice was injured when the circular power saw he was working with kicked back and cut into his forearm, resulting in severe bone, tendon, nerve and soft tissue injuries.

SafeWork SA told the court that the apprentice was instructed to hold the saw in one hand while using the other to secure the timber being cut; a method that Magistrate Michael Ardlie agreed was: “… clearly inadequate and hazardous given the lack of experience on the part of (the apprentice) … The defendant failed to carry out any adequate hazard identification and risk assessment for the task …”

The business has since been sold and new safety systems have been put in place.

In another matter, Orrcon Operations was convicted and fined $22,400 over a 2007 incident at its manufacturing facility where an employee suffered injuries to three fingers that were caught in the unguarded chain and sprocket of a steel-milling machine, following maintenance work.

The Magistrate noted that there were extensive safety systems in place and the trapping-point involved wasn’t accessible during the machine’s normal operation mode: “Whilst the defendant had considered in some detail the operation of the plant it had not considered the trapping-point … being accessible in the way the employee accessed it.”

This was the defendant’s second conviction since 2006 and so faced a higher maximum penalty of $200,000, but it received credit for its early plea, cooperation, contrition and prompt remedial action.

In the third matter, Lane Brothers Printers was convicted and fined $9000 over a 2007 incident at its premises where an employee suffered a crush injury to a fingertip while operating a book-stapling machine.

SafeWork SA’s investigation found that the operator had access to the machine’s moving parts. A new and more effective guard has since been fitted and a full risk-analysis of the facility was completed and acted on. This was the company’s first safety breach in 37 years of operation.

“Contact with moving machinery is one of the most common causes of workplace injury,” says SafeWork SA Executive Director Michele Patterson. “These cases highlight the need to rigorously factor safety into all facets of work, especially the plant and equipment involved and the work practices themselves.

“The vast majority of incidents of harm such as these are foreseeable and avoidable, provided the appropriate analysis identifies all situations which may arise, no matter how unusual or infrequent.”