Company cited "for hiding workers' injury..."

Every country has a different requirement for reporting injuries to the pertinent government safety organization. The failure to report injuries can have serious consequences upon the aluminium company and the individual(s) responsible for reporting these injuries. Here is a recent highlighting that somehow someway government safety organizations always seem to know when a company is not reporting incidents:

Labor Standards Inspection Office in Japan reported that an aluminium company employee (name omitted) did not report workers' accident incidents during the aluminum processing work and was suspected of violating the Occupational Safety and Health Law on February 9, with (company name) an aluminum product manufacturing company, and the employee in charge was sent for documentation.

In July last year, a male employee in his 20s working at the aluminium factory got burned to his left wrist while working on melting aluminum, and he got injured requiring a closure of four days or more requiring reporting, the location did not report promptly.

According to the Labor Department office, the company explained that "Because some male employees said they want their injuries to be silent, some bosses hid them."

We pray that the worker(s) recovered fully from their injury. We hope that the company makes the necessary changes to ensure that reporting is done. One company has a unique way of ensuring reporting. This company uses many factors (number of employees, hazards, production volumes, etc.) to estimate how many incidents and near misses a plant should have. If a plant is underreporting their headquarters knows and make the necessary changes (replacing the plant manager).

We recall walking into one casthouse and observing solidified metal on the ceiling of the facility (15 meters above). The casthouse manager stated that they never had a molten metal explosion. Either he was not telling the truth or his workers were not reporting the explosion. Or a combination of both.

We chose not to name the company because in our experience this was not an isolated incident. Workers do not report incidents for mainly one reason only. FEAR. They fear retribution for reporting an incident. This fear is real. We have known several incidents where the plant management made it well known that they did not want incidents reported. In the most grievous incidents we have heard of plant managers covering up incidents that resulted in injuries or fatalities.

When we speak to workers we explain the importance of reporting injuries. Our message is simple “you have to report near misses and incidents!”.

The Aluminium Times Magazine had an article about the importance of reporting incidents. It can be downloaded here.

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