One worker seriously injured while clearing a paper jam, another got hurt adjusting material at mask manufacturing facility
British Columbia paper manufacturer Westbond Industries has been fined $17,000 after one of its workers was seriously injured in the workplace.
The incident happened at the company’s Delta location last month, when a worker was clearing a paper jam in the rollers. The worker was seriously hurt after being caught in the running machine.
WorkSafeBC inspected the facility and found the machine was not locked out and that its guard had been removed. Also, the firm’s standard practices for clearing jams did not require machines to be locked out.
Read more: Worker injuries lead to five-figure fine for employer
“The firm failed to ensure lockout was conducted in accordance with procedures made available to all workers, a repeated violation. The firm also failed to provide its workers with the information, instruction, training, and supervision necessary to ensure their health and safety. These were both high-risk violations,” according to WorkSafeBC.
Also, Vitacore Industries Inc. – which operates a surgical mask and respirator manufacturing facility – was fined $13,155 after one of its workers was injured in the workplace.
The incident happened at the firm’s Burnaby work site. The worker was injured while adjusting material between two unguarded rollers of a mask manufacturing machine.
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WorkSafeBC observed two mask manufacturing machines that did not have safeguards. Both had several unguarded points of operation, including rotating feed rollers, accessible gears and sprockets, and exposed running belts.
“The firm failed to ensure that every gear and chain sprocket was completely enclosed, and failed to ensure rotating parts exposed to contact by workers were guarded. These were both repeated violations,” according to the government agency.
Under the B.C. Occupational Health and Safety Regulation, employers must ensure that machinery and equipment is fitted with adequate safeguards which:
- protect a worker from contact with hazardous power transmission parts,
- ensure that a worker cannot access a hazardous point of operation, and
- safely contain any material ejected by the work process which could be hazardous to a worker.
B.C.’s manufacturing sector has an injury rate 24 per cent higher than the provincial average, with over 19,000 time-loss injuries in 2021 — close to 4,000 of which were deemed serious.
