Texas Company Fined $212K Over Safety Hazards

May 20, 2012

  • May 21, 2012 at 2:17 pm
    Agent says:
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    Where is the WC carrier. An account with 900 workers is bound to have it. WC Loss Control should have identified these hazards and required implementation. If Texas Mutual was on it, I promise this would have been addressed or they would come off of it.

  • May 22, 2012 at 9:18 am
    Underwriter says:
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    Really then why did this company get fined when TMI is the carrier?

    A Texas manufacturer has been cited for willful and serious safety violations after an employee reportedly suffered an amputation at the company’s facility in Waco.

    The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration cited Hobbs Bonded Fibers Inc. for one willful and five serious safety violations. Hobbs was also cited last June for exposing employees to workplace hazards.

    It was reported that an employee’s arm was pulled into the rollers of an operating textile machine while the employee was cleaning fibrous material out from under the machine.

    The willful violation is failing to ensure that shaft ends were guarded and keyways covered, and machine guarding was provided for rotating belts, pulleys, chains and sprockets to prevent contact with pinch points.

    A willful violation is one committed with intentional knowing or voluntary disregard for the law’s requirements, or with plain indifference to worker safety and health.

    The serious violations include failing to ensure an exit route met height/width requirements and was not located in a high-hazard area, provide specific lockout/tagout procedures to verify the control of energy and train workers in relevant lockout/tagout procedures when their job assignments were changed.

    A serious violation occurs when there is substantial probability that death or serious physical harm could result from a hazard about which the employer knew or should have known. Proposed penalties for these most recent violations total $103,950.

    In June 2011, OSHA cited Hobbs with 29 serious violations carrying $161,100 in penalties for exposing workers to a variety of workplace hazards. The company has contested these

  • May 22, 2012 at 10:18 am
    Agent says:
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    It is hard for me to believe in today’s world that any company in an industrial environment is failing to train their employees on the safe way to work around machinery and provide protective gear so they will not be injured. For sure, employees sometime disregard safety procedures and often don’t wear safety glasses or the work gloves around sharp metal etc. I am amazed at some of the cases I see with objects in the eye due to not wearing goggles or safety glasses. Texas Mutual does do extensive Loss Control with accounts including those with a frequency problem and identify hazards associated with that industry. The insured does have to implement them and when they don’t, bad things happen. There goes the modifier.

  • May 22, 2012 at 12:03 pm
    San Antonio Rose says:
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    Insured was with Travelers most recently.

    • May 22, 2012 at 12:34 pm
      Agent says:
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      I wonder if Travelers made recs that were not followed. Perhaps these fines were a wake up call that they had some hazards in their operation. A 900 employee company should have a safety manager to implement safe work practices. Where was he all this time?



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