Firefighters in Airdrie, Alberta were pushed to the limit after an accident on March 23, when they undertook an arduous procedure to free a worker’s fingers, after they became wedged between the jaws of a machine made to fold steel.

A brake press operator and an assistant were using the industrial machine, which is used to put bends in plate or sheet metals, at Westman Steel, when the assistant’s fingers became pinched between the jaws of the press, causing “flattening.” Thankfully, there was not enough clamping to sever the fingers.

The machine was immediately locked up tight and firefighters were called. When they arrived, they got in touch with a technician in Kansas City and began to dismantle three of the brake press motors and removed several bolts. Those steps, along with two sets of jaws of life and eight pry bars, they were finally able to clear about two millimetres, which was enough to release her fingers. In all, the operation took about an hour.

The worker was taken to hospital with damage to the tips of two of her fingers.

No stop-use or stop-work orders were issued, but the company has been ordered to investigate the incident, with Alberta Human Services expected to follow up in mid-April with another thorough investigation.

The Ontario Ministry of Labour has fined Quebec-based 4536631 Canada Inc., owner of a Rona Cashway Building Centre in North Bay $65,000 for a violation of the Occupational Health and Safety Act after an accident in which a worker was injured.

The incident that led to the fine occurred on August 12, 2010, as workers were using a forklift to help them organize materials as they were cleaning a drywall warehouse at the building centre.  A young worker on the team mistakenly assumed that eye contact had been made with a forklift operator as he approached and walked behind it. As he did so, the operator reversed the forklift towards the young worker at a high speed and did not see him in time to avoid running over the young worker, The resulting collision resulted in bone fractures and nerve damage.

An investigation by the Ministry of Labour found that there were no adequate warning signs or barriers in place to protect workers where the forklift was being used.

4536631 Canada Inc. pleaded guilty to failing to ensure that barriers, warning signs or other safeguards were in place to protect workers in an area where vehicular traffic may endanger a worker.  The fine was imposed by Justice of the Peace Diane Lafleur, who also imposed a 25% victim fine surcharge, as required by the Provincial Offences Act. The surcharge is credited to a special provincial government fund to assist victims of crime.

According to a new report published last week in the journal Public Health Reports, researchers at the Colorado School of Public Health found that, because of inadequately regulated work environments in the U.S. and Canada, 88 youth under the age of 20 die from work-related injuries  each year, while 20,000 young workers miss work in private industry every year due to occupational- related illness or injury.

The study’s lead author was Carol Runyan, Ph.D., MPH, and professor of epidemiology at the Colorado School of Public Health. When the report was released, she commented that, “We don’t tend to think of child labor as a major issue in the U.S., but we should. Laws governing the employment of youth ages 14 to 17 in this country are often very lenient and in the case of family farms virtually non-existent.”

Runyan, along with colleagues John Lewko, PhD, of Laurentian University in Ontario, and Kimberly Rauscher, ScD, of West Virginia University, are brandishing the report as they advocate for stronger governmental monitoring of young worker safety, and encourage more research into preventing workplace injuries among teenagers.

“Work can help young people develop skills, explore career options, earn money and gain self-esteem,” Runyan said. “But without adequate safeguards in place, work can also be dangerous for youth.”

Young people are no small faction in U.S. and Canadian labor forces. As of 2010, more than 17.6 million workers under age 25 are employed in the U.S., while three million workers between the ages of 15 and 24 were employed in Canada.

The study notes that young workers face a number of risks on the job, including being burned working near fire and hot grill tops, being cut by sharp tools and automatic slicers, falling or being  hit by heavy equipment at construction sites, or even being robbed and possibly shot, in some cases.

Runyan began her research when she served as director of the University of North Carolina Injury Prevention Research Center. She now directs the University of Colorado’s Pediatric Injury Prevention, Education and Research Program.

“We need to make sure that the jobs our kids take are safe,” Runyan said. “But ultimately it’s not the responsibility of 15-year-olds to ensure their safety –it’s the responsibility of employers.”

The Saskatchewan Workers’ Compensation Board (WCB) announced its 2011 injury statistics, and the results are a somewhat disappointing mixed bag, according to agency officials.

Last year, the province’s time loss injury rate was 3.05 percent, a decrease of 2.3 percent from 2010, which marked the ninth straight year that number has dropped. Unfortunately, while the time loss injury rate went down in 2011, the total injury rate increased from 8.70% in 2010 to 8.73% last year.

The Saskatchewan WCB finds the increase in total injury rate disappointing. They note that there were more people working in Saskatchewan in 2011, and they give credit to workers and employers across the province who are working hard to keep the numbers down, but they stress that the province has to stop accepting injuries as ‘accidents’ and an inevitable part of work.

The WCB and Ministry of Labour Relations and Workplace Safety (LRWS) created the WorkSafe Saskatchewan injury prevention partnership in 2002. Through the partnership, they have developed a broad based provincial prevention strategy, resulting in Saskatchewan’s total injury rate improving by 24%.  During the same time frame, the province’s time loss injury rate has dropped from 4.95% to the current rate, which constitutes a 38% improvement.

The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has announced finding nine workplace violations at a candy repackaging and distribution facility owned by The Hershey Co. and operated by Exel Inc. in Palmyra, Pennsylvania. The proposed penalties for these nine violations could cost Exel $283,000.

The six-month investigation that led to the violations was prompted by a complaint brought by the National Guestworker Alliance on behalf of a group of foreign student workers. Last August, more than 100 such workers protested working conditions at the facility, saying they took the jobs as part of what they believed would be a cultural exchange, not to find themselves working at low-paying menial jobs that left them little time or energy to do much else.

According to OSHA, six of the violations were willful, for not recording injuries and illnesses over a four-year period and not taking the required steps to protect workers’ hearing.  The citations documented cases of workers being hit by falling boxes, being cut by cardboard and suffering a variety of injuries.

The Alliance claimed the citations demonstrated that Exel did not maintain a health and safety system sufficient to allow someone to work there on a permanent, long-term basis.

OSHA also proposed a $5,000 fine against SHS Staffing Solutions, the firm that helped place the students, claiming they failed to train employees regarding safe handling of high-energy equipment.

Exel plans to fight OSHA’s findings, adding that the citations involved only the co-packing area within the Palmyra facility, and that they mostly involved record-keeping.

A 53-year-old worker was killed and a 54-year-old auto repair shop owner was hospitalized in serious condition after a truck tire exploded while they attempted to repair it on Saturday, February 25 at 4 Wheel Collision & Frame in Edmonton.

According to Alberta Occupational Health and Safety, the incident occurred just before 4 p.m., as the two were welding the rim of a wheel on a dump truck to repair a flat.  As they worked, the tire exploded. Emergency personnel arrived on the scene quickly, with OH&S officials arriving soon after.

Occupational Health and Safety investigators were still at the scene as of late Saturday night. A stop-work order was issued on the spot, with other orders expected after the  completion of their investigation.

Service NL, Newfoundland and Labrador’s agency responsible for investigating provincial workplace safety incidents, announced last week that they have charged the Iron Ore Company of Canada (IOC) for five violations of the Occupational Health and Safety Act in connection with a fatal accident that occurred in Labrador City nearly two years ago.

In the accident, which occurred in March 2010, two company workers fell about 23 feet from a work platform that was being used to access spill chains, which are used to slow iron ore as it flows from the crusher to the ore car. One of the workers died.

According to the Service NL report on the accident investigation, the charges brought against IOC relate generally to the company’s alleged failure to ensure; that adequate fall protection was in place; that lockout procedures were in effect; that equipment was capable of safely performing the functions for which it was intended; that workers and especially supervisors were made familiar with the hazards likely to be met; and that training, supervision and facilities necessary to ensure the workers’ safety were provided.

The Ontario Ministry of Labour recently released the results of a province-wide safety inspection blitz that occurred last August. The blitz focused on access equipment, such as scaffolding. During the blitz, inspectors conducted 998 inspections at 903 workplaces and issued 2,955 orders for violations of the Occupational Health and Safety Act (OHSA), including 243 stop-work orders.

While most of the orders were for lack of adequate supervision and training or inadequate implementation of a well functioning internal responsibility system (IRS), approximately one out of every six violations were related to the unsafe use of access equipment.

 Between 2003 and 2008, more than a third of all fatal falls involving construction workers happened in relation to the use of access equipment. Of the 61 construction workers who died from falls at construction sites during that period, 24 involved access equipment. In one particularly tragic accicent, on Christmas Eve 2009, four workers fell 13 storeys to their deaths when a swing-stage scaffold came apart at a Toronto construction site.

The intent of the blitz was to focus workers’ attention on the appropriate selection and safe use of access equipment.  Therefore, every inspection included an equipment audit.

Alberta Occupational Health and Safety officials have confirmed that a worker for Dawson Wallace has died after structural steel fell on top of a hydraulic lift at a construction site in northwest Edmonton. The death marks the 14th workplace fatality in the province, which is already four more than all of last year. Labour groups are calling on officials to do more to prevent the rising tide of workplace fatalities.

The latest victim is a 28-year-old worker who was working at a warehouse under construction on October 18. He and several co-workers were placing steel I-beams on a skeletal structure as part of the warehouse construction near 145th Avenue and 156th Street. There were two iron workers in each lift as one of the I-beams fell, for some unknown reason. The beam hit one of the lifts, causing it to tip over. The worker fell about 17 metres and died at the scene. Another worker was stranded in a different basket for about 20 minutes.

Occupational Health and Safety officials say they are working hard to prevent what they recognize are too many injuries and fatalities in an inherently dangerous construction sector. They note that the hiring of new OHS inspectors and an increase in the number of targeted worksite inspections are intended to make them safer. They also cite worker safety education as a crucial part of the overall provincial safety strategy.

But while the Alberta Federation of Labour agrees education is part of the solution, they have gone on record saying that what the province is doing simply isn’t enough. The group notes that the province ignored warnings, and failed to prepare for a possible construction boom. They also point out that the new inspectors the province is hiring will simply replace inspectors who were laid off in previous years. They also complain that employers continue to receive advanced warnings about targeted inspections, which defeats their purpose. All of those factors contribute to Alberta lagging behind all other provinces when it comes to safety.

The union recommends provincial OHS officials begin to do more unannounced inspections, and to be far more aggressive in prosecuting employers who put their workers at risk.

Regulators with the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) have proposed $130,200 in penalties to Texas oil and gas drilling company Ringo Drilling in the wake of a June accident in which a worker was electrocuted.

According to OSHA, the 25-year-old worker, Servando Salinas Cervantes, died while performing repair work on an oil drilling rig.  After an investigation, OSHA safety inspectors found that the company failed to train workers on electrical equipment hazards, failed to provide guardrails to keep workers from falling into holes more than four feet deep near a well, and did not ensure stepladders were used properly. In another serious violation, inspectors found that the company did not properly guard electrical junction boxes.

Among other penalties against the company included three repeat violations for failing to provide worker protection from platform falls, not inspecting electrical cords and failing to ensure proper strain relief for electrical cables. The company was cited for similar violations in 2008 and again last year.

Ringo Drilling has 15 days to contest the findings with OSHA.