"for a stack of sows to collapse..."

Aluminium sows come in all shapes and sizes. The stacking of sows can be hazard depending on their shape and the floor that they are stacked on. Here is a recent incident emphasizing the need for caution during the storage of aluminium sows in our plants.

An aluminum plant in the United States has been cited and fined by federal regulators in the accidental death of a worker there during the summer of 2014. 

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration fined the aluminium company €6,400.

During the week of June 29, 2014, a worker was killed. While working in the remelt and recycling area of the plant.

The worker for a temporary employment agency, as a metal resources operator. The worker had been working at the aluminium plant since 2006.

In the citation, OSHA said that stacks of aluminum sows, or ingots, were set on an asphalt surface and that "leaning of the stacks and the supporting asphalt pad allowed for a stack of sows to collapse." The day after the accident, OSHA said, another stack of sows on an ingot pad were leaning, which created a potential for it to collapse. The materials stored should have been "stacked, blocked, interlocked or limited in height so that it was stable and secure against sliding and collapse," the citation said.

Whenever there is a workplace fatality or serious injury, employers are required to alert OSHA, which then investigates. If OSHA finds that a standard or regulation was violated, it can issue citations and fines and force the company to take corrective action. The company has the option to contest the citation.

"The aluminium company did not appeal the citation" said the OSHA area director. The aluminium company had also corrected the issue before OSHA required them to do so, he said.

"This tragic incident remains a painful event in our company and plant's history," said the aluminium plant manager, said in a statement. "Our thoughts and prayers continue to go out to the family and friends of (the deceased)"

"The safety of our employees is a top priority and we will continue to pursue all measures to ensure all who enter our plant return home safely each day."

The Aluminium Plant Safety Blog offers our sincere condolences to the deceased worker’s family, friends and coworkers. One hopes that overtime the pain that they feel will ease. We acknowledge that their pain will never go away.

The use of “temporary employment agency” workers in some parts of the world has grown exponentially over the past ten years. In the past an aluminium plant would consist of 100% aluminium company workers. Through a series of never ending industry recessions that resulted in numerous layoffs have left some plants with a work force that has dropped to as low as 70%. With the remaining being either contractors, or “temporary employment agency” workers. That growth was done for to save money. Unfortunately, these non aluminium company workers seem in our opinion to have a higher injury and/or fatality rate than company workers. That could be for the simple fact that many of these non-company workers perform very dangerous or hazardous jobs in these plants that were previously performed by aluminium company workers. We do not see this trend going away.  

The training of these workers is a challenge for safety professionals in our industry. In the past training of workers entering a plant typically involved individuals living in nearby communities. Those individuals normally spoke the same language, had the same language. For instance, there is a reason why so many aluminium companies provide support to local schools. Why? So that they can assist in raising the education of their future workers. Some companies have seen a benefit, others won’t for a decade. But, back to the temporary workers. Now what occurs is a plant might have 4-6 languages spoken by their workers. Though the APSB has not be able to locate any statistics on literacy rates of these workers, our experience is that this is an issue that some plants initially struggle with. Workers who cannot read pose a safety risk of unimaginable consequences. There have been several incidents in our industry’s history where the question of literacy was brought up as a contributing factor. Long ago one of our editors trained to be an adult literacy teacher. It is humbling to understand that something so many of us take for granted, is a prison to so many that they have adapted to the best of their abilities. To combat the potential of workers who cannot read some plants have taken to making instructional videos of procedures to be used as training aids.

The worker in this incident had been working at this aluminium plant for over five years. The APSB does not think, nor does OSHA feel that a lack of training, or the training program contributed in anyway. We are simply pointing out that the issues that some plant deal with on a daily basis may seem foreign to many.

The stacking of raw materials (sow, ingots, t-bars, etc.) as well finished product is a potential hazard in all plants. This incidents, as well as many others the APSB has shown that a potential hazard can become a hazard very easily, with deadly consequences. The problem that the ASPB has viewed in our plant visits is that workers get complacent overtime. If not sloppy. Managers who insist on set procedures through training and enforcement are less likely for incidents involving the temporary storage of products. We have seen countless times stacks of material leaning, or improperly stacked. At every occasion we bring these issues up to our hosts. Why, because if we did not and found out that later an incident occurred, we would have lived with that regret for the rest of our lives that our failure to act ultimately resulted in an injury or fatality.

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