A Massachusetts concrete company has agreed to plead guilty to violating Occupational Safety and Health Administration safety standards in connection with a 2023 incident in which a worker was crushed to death.
John Oliveira & Sons Stamp Concrete, Inc., a business operating out of East Freetown, ignored safety concerns, which led to the worker’s death, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, District of Massachusetts.
The company used a large soil screener that was about 46 feet long and 13 feet high and weighed nearly 18 tons. According to prosecutors, the tail conveyor of the soil screener had suffered a ruptured hydraulic pressure line, causing it to close unexpectedly at various occasions throughout 2022 and 2023.
The company did nothing to address the issue, according to prosecutors, and on Sept. 6, 2023, an employee was working alongside a co-owner of the company when the tail conveyor closed without warning. The employee held onto the upper frame of the soil screener as the conveyor closed into the vertical position, crushing the employee’s head.
The employee died, and a subsequent OSHA investigation found six safety violations.
The company was fined $200,905, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
According to a 2023 U.S. Department of Labor release, OSHA investigators found that John Oliveira & Sons Stamp Concrete did not do the following:
· Have an energy control program to isolate the conveyor’s power source and prevent an unintended startup.
· Provide locks, tags or other hardware to isolate, secure or block machines and equipment from their energy sources to prevent sudden starts or moves.
· Adequately maintain the soil screener, which had numerous defects and missing parts.
· Forbid employees from riding in a front-end loader’s bucket, exposing them to crush and fall hazards.
· Record each work-related fatality, injury or illness case on the OSHA Form 300 or equivalent.
In a statement, OSHA area director James Mulligan said those violations made it clear the company was to blame for the worker’s death.
“John Oliveira & Sons Stamp Concrete Inc.’s failure to employ well-known safeguards needlessly cost a worker’s life,” Mulligan said.
