Employee suffers leg injuries after being pulled into machine
An employee suffered painful injuries when they were dragged into a machine, a hearing into workplace safety failings at AMR Textiles Ltd was told.
In the prosecution by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) on January 10th, Trafford Magistrates Court was told that the Middleton employee broke some bones in their ankle and left foot as a result of the accident at work, which occurred on June 21st 2012.
The unnamed 25-year-old worker was in Kearsley-based AMR Textile Ltd's Stoneclough factory, which is located on the Europa Park Trading Estate, when he was cleaning the inside of a tower so he could remove some loose fibres.
When he had climbed into the tower, the machine unexpectedly started. This pulled the employee's legs through the rollers he had been standing on, leading to the injuries.
The court was told that while the worker was cleaning the machine, a colleague put an override key in so that they could test a separate part of the equipment. This caused the rollers to begin rotating.
Before the accident at work occurred, the company had provided every supervisor with a manual override key as a result of changes to workplace machinery. This allowed supervisors to override the safety guards for cleaning or maintenance. This breached health and safety laws - workers should not be able to climb into machines when they can still operate.
Since this incident, the company has now taken its manual override keys off its supervisors. Furthermore, the fibre tower the victim climbed into has been replaced to one that cannot be accessed from the inside.
The HSE's investigation also showed that the company had fitted an interlock on the access hatch as a workplace safety measure, but that it had not checked this device regularly, so at the time of the accident at work, it was not functioning properly.
The company admitted breaching the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 in the court hearing and was fined £8,000 with prosecution costs of £10,103.
Manufacturing is one of the most dangerous industries in the UK. HSE data shows that over the last five years, an average of 31 people died in workplace accidents in the manufacturing industry every year, while over 4,500 major injuries and more than 19,500 injuries keeping workers away from work for at least three days are seen annually. However, the vast majority of people in manufacturing do not suffer any health problems on the average year - there are approximately 2.8 million people employed in manufacturing at the moment. Furthermore, the industry appears to be getting safer, with 2012 to 2013 seeing 20 fatal accidents at work in the manufacturing sector.
Manufacturing employers must think about the health and safety consequences of their workplace seriously and take all reasonably practicable steps to prevent their workers from becoming injured in the workplace. Employers must not take a gamble with workplace safety, as the consequences of losing this gamble could be catastrophic.
Carol Smith is very interested in preventing accident at work compensation claims and protecting the health and safety of employees. She researches personal injury compensation for a team of solicitors and she loves to write legal content on personal injury claim and accident at work. She lives in Manchester.
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