Posted:
Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009
Category:
OSHA and Safety
When a company receives an OSHA citation after an accident or a death, it’s not exactly welcome news. It’s nice to be made aware of the cause of the situation, but it certainly isn’t great to hear that the accident could have been prevented if OSHA guidelines were followed. Recently, a business in Nebraska was fined $7,000 for an accident that killed a 24-year-old employee back in March of this year. The store, a Menards chain located in Scottsbluff, had violated safety standards to a fatal point and the problems have been remedied since the incident occurred.
What kind of world do we live in where someone has to die before unsafe conditions are taken care of and fixed to create a safe environment for all? Of course, the stack of garden bundles that fell on the employee was not actually an intended safety violation, but more a matter of gravity and unplanned accidents. No criminal penalties are being sought, but the stack was leaning as seen by OSHA compliance representative that visited the site to investigate. They assessed the maximum penalty, and simply left it at that.
Having unsafe working conditions can be dangerous, but when something like an aisle stack is to blame for the death of a worker, it’s hard to wonder where you are safe and where you aren’t. This news comes from the Chicago Tribune, and is just one of many unsettling stories of compliance violations and workplace deaths that you can find by simply typing ‘OSHA’ into the Google news search engine. OSHA compliance is critical for a company to remain in proper order, but is more critical to the safety and protection of the employees that work within a company.
Even though the problems at this particular situation have been taken care of, how long will it take for the victim’s family to get over the fact that he could have avoided the accident if things were done properly, or checked upon before becoming an issue? What will they think of the store, and the OSHA compliance guidelines that could have saved their loved one’s life? It’s a hard situation to be in, because sometimes accidents just happen. However, with proper OSHA training and compliance and a little common sense, most of them can be avoided. This is just one example that proves that if you’re ever in an unsafe situation, you need to make sure that you do something about it no matter how insignificant it seems.
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