Toowoomba company fined $35,000 for workplace safety breach
Date issued: 2009-09-29
A manufacturing, repair and maintenance company has been fined $35,000 after a worker was injured at its Toowoomba workplace in May 2008.
Central Foundry Pty Ltd pleaded guilty in the Toowoomba Industrial Magistrates Court on 24 April 2009 to breaching section 24 of the Workplace Health and Safety Act 1995, having failed to ensure workplace safety.
The court heard a worker was operating a lathe while wearing tight-fitting sheet metal workers gloves supplied for handling materials in the workshop. To complete a final polish of a steel bar, he held a length of emery tape while the bar rotated at high speed.
The end of the tape wrapped around the lathe, jamming his fingers and pulling his left hand and arm into the rotating lathe. He sustained fractures and tearing to his left hand and arm.
The Workplace Health and Safety Queensland investigation revealed the company did not implement adequate risk management practices to ensure the health and safety of workers operating the lathe.
Warnings against wearing gloves and the use of emery tape were covered in the operator’s manual for the lathe, but the company did not supervise the worker to ensure gloves were not worn or that emery tape was not used for performing finishing work.
Further, the company did not adequately supervise its workers and should have known unsafe practices such as wearing gloves and use of emery tape were being tolerated.
Industrial Magistrate Ms Kay Ryan, in addition to the fine, ordered the company pay investigation, professional and court costs totalling $2,099.
Ms Ryan took into account the company’s previously good workplace record over some 60 years. No conviction was recorded.
The prosecution was brought by Workplace Health and Safety Queensland, a part of the Department of Justice and Attorney-General.
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