London company fined $75K for safety incident
A London company has been fined $75,000 in provincial offences court for its role in an incident that led to injuries to a worker.
Great Lakes Copper Ltd. is a London-based manufacturer of copper tubing for the plumbing, refrigeration and industrial markets. The company is based out of an office on Clarke Road, and operates a separate shipping and warehouse facility known as "CDC" on South Edgeware Road in St. Thomas.
On November 4, 2019, a worker from a temporary help agency and a second worker were working in the warehouse, retrieving stock and preparing it for shipping. This task is usually done by one worker; however, on that day the temporary worker was shadowing the second worker.
The second worker operated the forklift to lift the copper tubing, while the temporary worker was on foot, working between a weigh scale and a desk. They placed a bundle of copper tubes (made up of several smaller bundles) into a tube rack on the weigh scale, to be weighed and split into bundles.
Once the bundles were weighed and apportioned, the temporary worker wrapped two slings around the bundles, one at each end, and attached them to the forklift extension. Intending to maintain a tight bundle, a third "cinch strap" was added to the middle of the bundle.
The cinch strap was placed loosely over the top of the bundle after the forklift had already started lifting. However, due to the height of the lift at the time, the temporary worker did not see that the strap had also been thrown around the fixed frame of the tube rack on the scale. The second worker raised the lift further, which now consisted of the tubing bundle and the tube rack.
The second worker could see the rack was tipping and began to lower the lift. However, the cinch strap released, causing the bundle and tube rack to fall and strike the temporary worker, who was knocked into a nearby desk and onto the floor where the worker was pinned. The tube rack and tube bundle pinning the worker weighed about 1,300 lbs. The worker suffered injuries.
Great Lakes Copper had a standard operating procedure (SOP) for picking straight stock, and the workers had been trained on this SOP. However, the SOP did not address the step of adding a cinch strap to bundles being lifted, despite the fact that the schematic in the SOP shows a cinch str ap on a bundle. It was the general practice among workers to add a cinch strap, but they had not been trained on how to do so safely and the cinch strap had sometimes been caught on the tube rack frame during previous lifts.
Great Lakes Copper pled guilty to a violation of the Occupational Health and Safety Act and its regulations. In addition to a fine, the company will also pay a 25-percent victim fine surcharge that will be credited to a special provincial government fund to assist victims of crime.