“I wouldn’t say it’s unusual to receive a complaint like this.”

In many parts of the world if a worker feels unsafe on the job they can take a variety of actions including but not limited to and in no particular order: notifying their supervisor, notifying their department manager, notifying the safety officer, etc. If all that fails to remedy situation many countries accept anonymous complaints to the federal authority responsible for worker safety. Here is a recent story where a worker(s) notified a federal government agency about their belief of unsafe conditions in their aluminium plant:

The an aluminium plant was the subject of an Occupational Safety and Health Administration inspection early in May as the result of a complaint filed by a former employee.

A spokesman for the aluminium company, said the company takes employee safety seriously.

“Sometimes there are accidents and when they do happen, we report them,” the aluminium company spokesman said. “I wouldn’t say it’s unusual to receive a complaint like this.”

The aluminium company spokesman said he didn’t know what the complaint was about, but stressed that the managers at the aluminium company constantly remind employees about safety measures.

“We have accidents, things happen,” he said. “So when they do, we take measures to correct it and to keep up with changing safety requirements. … Who is our best resource? It’s the employees, of course. We try to take care of them as best we can. We are a big community company and we intend to stay here for a long time."

The inspection took place in May 2017 and is the fifth inspection resulting from an employee complaint or a referral from another agency since 2013, according to information available at www.osha.gov. A final report has not been filed for the most recent inspection.

The news media organization attempted to get comment from the United States Department of Labor in regards to the May 2017 inspection went unanswered.

The aluminium company has received 11 violations from four different inspections since June 2013. Those violations resulted in over $35,000 in fines from OSHA.

The Aluminium Plant Safety Blog has chosen to omit this company’s name and location because our goal is not to shame companies. We hope that the reader will view this post and look upon its own employer and ask the question. “Does the working environment here encourage speaking out when a worker feels uncomfortable about a job function?”

It is unknown if the “former employee” in this story was the only one who filed a complaint. Because, how did the aluminium company spokesperson know about the individual who filed the complaint was a “former employer”? Just wondering. Regardless, the aluminium company is averaging an OSHA inspection once every four months. In our experience, that seems to be a lot. If the inspections are based on worker complaints. The company has some communication issues regarding plant management and plant personnel that need to addressed.

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