Company fined £3,000 after worker’s personal injury
A Nottingham firm which makes garden and household tools has been fined £3,000 after a worker had to have his finger amputated when it was crushed in an unguarded machine.
The 29-year-old shift manager, from Alfreton, was off work for a month after his finger was amputated below the second knuckle.
Nottingham Magistrates’ Court was told that the worker was employed by Fiskars UK Ltd’s Bulwell factory when the incident happened on 15th December 2011.
While he was fiddling with the top of the machine, it started working again and his finger was caught beneath the weight of the press and was crushed.
A Health and Safety Executive (HSE) found a perspex guard on the machine was missing and the company had failed to ensure a safe system of work was in operation for the weight adjustments on the machine ram.
In addition, there was no safe means of access and no safe method for the isolation of the machine.
Fiskars UK Ltd, of Bennerley Road, Bulwell, Nottingham, was also ordered to pay £2,288.10 costs after admitting to breaching Section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974.
After the hearing, HSE inspector Judith McNulty-Green said that the incident was entirely preventable yet several failures led to a man suffering a painful injury.
“To adjust the weight, workers were climbing on to the front ledge, a practice which should never have been allowed,” he said.
“Instead, Fiskars should have devised and implemented a safe system of work that ensured no-one had access to dangerous moving parts.
“In addition the workforce should have been provided with detailed training and instruction in how to carry out the task.”