A London company and one of its supervisors have been fined a total of $97,000 after two workers were injured on the job in two separate incidents.
AGF Rebar Inc., which operates a facility at 120 McMillan Street, had the fine levied against it after recently pleading guilty in London court to violating the Occupational Health and Safety Act.
According to the Ministry of Labour, the first of the two incidents happened on December 7, 2018. A worker at AGF Rebar Inc. was using a remote operated overhead crane to load bundles of steel rebar onto a flatbed when two of the bundles fell off the 26 ft. trailer. The worker tried to move out of the way, but was hit on the hands by steel pieces sticking out of the falling bundles. The worker was taken to hospital with unspecified injuries.
A little over a month later on January 11, 2019, another worker was critically hurt while processing material on a machine in the company's yard. The employee had been assigned by a supervisor to work with two colleagues processing rebar into a specific shape. He did so using a machine called a rotary bender, which is regularly used to bend straight pieces of rebar at various angles. The rebar has to be manually fed between two rollers into the machine. However, the leveling pad on the rotary bender had worn down and an unfastened 13-inch piece of scrap metal placed over it.
"At the time of the incident, the worker was feeding a rebar into the machine by hand and was adjusting a levelling plate located in front of the rollers on the bender table because it had started to shift. This plate was not fastened to the table and was moving," the Ministry said in a statement on Tuesday. "It was during this process that the worker was pulled by the rebar into a pinch point. This area was not equipped with a guard. The worker suffered critical injuries."
The worker's injuries came several months after Ministry inspectors had visited the company and issued a total of 18 orders requiring safety guards be installed and properly maintained on bending machines inside of the building. While the company complied with the order for machines inside of its facility, it did not install guards for equipment being used in its yard. As such, both the company and a supervisor were charged.
The company was fined $30,000 in the first incident and $65,000 in the second. In addition to the $95,000 fine, a 25 per cent surcharge was imposed as required by the Provincial Offences Act.
The supervisor was fined $2,000 for his part in the January 2019 injury.
