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OSHA fines recycling plant after conveyer belt worker death

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A recycling plant pleaded guilty to willfully violating Occupational Safety and Health Administration regulations, resulting in the death of an employee.

Rockford, Illinois-based Behr Iron & Steel Inc. admitted that it failed to provide lockout/tagout protection — designed to stop machinery from operating during maintenance and servicing — and confined space protection as required under OSHA regulations for employees who were cleaning a shredder discharge pit, according to the plea agreement filed last week with the U.S. District Court in Chicago. The violations resulted in an unnamed employee getting caught in a moving, unguarded conveyor belt, pulled into the machinery and killed in March 2014, according to the plea agreement.

The Department of Justice and Behr have agreed to jointly recommend a sentence of five years of probation and restitution to the employee’s estate totaling $350,000, according to the agreement. Sentencing is scheduled for July 12.

OSHA regulations require employers to adopt safety procedures to ensure that dangerous machines are properly shut off and unable to start up again prior to the completion of maintenance or servicing work. The safety procedures include placing a lock on the power source of the machine and a tag on the lock warning that the machine cannot be operated until the warning is removed and identifying the employee who has the key to the lock. The agency has also promulgated regulations to protect employees from entering a confined space without safety precautions.

However, Behr admitted that there was no lock or operable emergency shut off switch in the discharge pit for the conveyor belt and the conveyor belt did not have guards designed to protect employees. Behr also admitted that employees in the discharge pit were not adequately trained to use the shredder or the conveyor belt and that the company had not developed and implemented confined space protection for employees entering the discharge pit.

“Justice cannot restore life to the victim whose body was crushed because Behr Iron and Steel failed to provide protection from dangerous machinery on the job,” Ken Nishiyama Atha, OSHA’s regional administrator in Chicago, said in a statement. “Safety training at the plant was woefully insufficient. Behr must be held responsible by the courts for ignoring safety standards and failing in its obligation to protect its workers on the job.”

The company could not be immediately reached for comment.

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