Former plant manager and safety manager arrested and indicted..

This is a follow-up to a story we posted 6 years ago. We chose not to name the company nor the workers. Why? Well our goal is never to place blame on the company nor the worker but our hope that by bringing awareness to these incidents will prevent future recurrence. It is an honorable goal. But after reading this story we wonder if we should have listed the names of the indicted. Here’s the story.

Two former Aluminum executives were federally indicted for allegedly covering up circumstances in the death of one worker caused by unsafe machinery.

The plant’s former general manager at the time, and the former safety coordinator, are both named in a four-count indictment handed up one day during the week of , according to a release from the U.S. Northern District Court.

The indictment alleges the two men made false statements to investigators from the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, withheld an email regarding the machinery’s safety and persuaded other workers to recant their previous email warnings about the machinery’s safety, “including by suggesting their jobs might be in jeopardy.”

A worker only 21 years old was killed in October 2012 when racks containing hot aluminum product weighing between 4,000 and 5,000 pounds that he was pushing on a conveyor tipped over, crushing him. The Mahoning County Coroner’s office ruled the worker’s death by “mechanical asphyxiation” was an accident.

Another worker also pushing the racks, was hospitalized for severe burns but survived.

The indictment states the two men and several other plant workers were aware the conveyor system was in need of maintenance as early as 2009, and it cites numerous emails wherein employees stress the importance of the repairs, though they ultimately never happened.

“Someone is seriously going to get hurt or even killed because of this,” reads an email sent from one employee on Oct. 26, 2012, just four days before worker’s death.

During an OSHA investigation launched the day after worker’s death, The two men provided numerous investigators several emails but allegedly withheld a June 2012 email in which (the former plant manager) stated he personally witnessed the conveyor rollers failing and wrote, “[w]e are going to wait until someone gets seriously [injured] or possibly killed when a rack falls on them.”

The former plant manager and former safety manager allegedly coerced employees included in those email chains to draft statements recanting their previous emails about the conveyor’s safety concerns, in an effort to receive a lesser OSHA violation and avoid certain penalties, including the company’s publication in OSHA’s “Severe Violator” list, the indictment states.

“There was nothing no one or (aluminium company) could have done to prevent this anymore than what we did,” wrote a shipping supervisor who later told investigators they wrote the statement because they feared losing their job.

The two men each face three counts for allegedly obstructing justice and OSHA proceedings and for conspiring to obstruct justice. The former safety officer faces an additional count of making false statements, for allegedly telling investigators he was unaware of any instances in which the conveyors failed. An attorney representing the aluminium company, said neither of the two managers remained with the company after the worker’s death. No other plant employees were terminated, he said.

“The company has cooperated with the investigation and continues to cooperate with the investigation,” he said.

We remember this incident in detail. We have spoken to thousands of workers about this incident. We talked about the horrific death of that young worker. While he was being asphyxiated the worker was being burned by extrusions that came out of the furnace. In the future we will address this incident to plant managers and department managers. To emphasize to them the moral obligation of doing what is right. No doubt this incident was going to occur. The former plant manager even predicted it. For unknown reasons they never fixed the problem(s) and a young worker died a horrible death and another suffered serious burns.

We pray that the injured worker has recovered fully from his burns and is leaving a productive life today. We pray that the deceased worker’s family finally resolve some sort of closure with this criminal case.

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