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Split decision on OSHA citations for Nissan

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Split decision on OSHA citations for Nissan

An administrative law judge of the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission vacated one serious citation item against Nissan North America Inc. but affirmed the other serious item and assessed a $12,675 penalty.

On July 31, 2016, a contract employee of Nissan was replacing a motor on a robot on the first floor of the company’s Canton, Mississippi, facility while three Nissan maintenance technicians were performing a preventive maintenance inspection on a conveyor on the upper level of the facility, according to commission documents. When the contract employee completed his task, he restarted the conveyor from the master control panel and it began to move. At that same moment, one of the technicians placed his hand on one of the conveyor’s belts and it was pulled into the conveyor, amputating three fingers.

Nissan timely reported the injury to the Jackson, Mississippi, area office of the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which launched an inspection beginning on Dec. 2, 2016, according to commission documents. The inspector recommended Nissan be issued a two-item serious citation alleging failure to notify the Nissan maintenance technicians of the restart of the conveyor and failure to properly train them on lockout procedures for the conveyor; the two-item citation carried a proposed total fine $21,140, which Nissan contested.

The law judge vacated one item of the citation alleging a violation of an OSHA standard that requires affected employees to be notified by the employer or authorized employee of the application and removal of lockout devices or tagout devices before the controls are applied and after they are removed from the machine or equipment after determining that the record failed to establish the applicability of the cited standard. But the law judge affirmed the second item that alleged a violation of an OSHA standard covering training requirements to be included in an employer’s energy control program after determining that the evidence established that the exposure was reasonably predictable and training the technicians was required.

“The standard requires initial training be sufficient for employees to acquire the skills necessary to perform safe lockout,” the law judge said. “For the technicians working on (the overhead conveyor), Nissan’s training did not meet this standard.”

“The evidence establishes the technicians were actually exposed to the hazard of unexpected startup of the conveyor,” the law judge continued. “Even if the injured employee had never placed his hand on the belt, he and Technician 2 were exposed to that hazard.”

The law judge also declined to reduce the proposed penalty for the second item because of the gravity of the fine, including the company’s failure to coordinate between the maintenance work and inspections, and Nissan’s large-employer status — the facility had more than 6,000 employees.

“Unexpected startup of the conveyor exposed the technicians to serious injury over the period required to perform the preventive maintenance inspection,” the law judge said. “Nissan failed to take precautions to ensure the technicians were protected from this hazard.”

“With regard to good faith, I find the serious discrepancies between Nissan’s written policies regarding training and its training practices to weigh against a finding of good faith,” the law judge continued.

The law judge’s ruling became a final order of the commission Friday.

“The safety and well-being of employees is always Nissan’s top priority,” a company spokeswoman said via email. “The company strives to comply with all workplace safety laws and regulations and dedicates extensive time and resources to safety and injury prevention programs.”

“We continue to work with OSHA through their established process,” the statement continued. “We also continue to work on determining what can be done to prevent future occurrences.”

 

 

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