Serious health and safety breach, marketing company paying fines
A worker was crushed to death because of a printing company issue. There were serious health and safety breaches at the marketing company. They have been ordered to pay £118,000 in fines and other costs due to the death. The company has about 700 workers throughout nine different sites in the UK. They were given health and safety warnings but ignored them. This is what led to the death of one 49-year-old worker. The worker became trapped in a hand fed press in 2008. He was pronounced dead on scene. It was stated that he was using the press to make signs on corrugated cards. Although details of the entire incident are not known, it is thought the worker was climbing on top of a moveable section to get some waste out of the improperly fed machine. He then became trapped being crushed by the press.
The HSE investigated the incident and found that the company did not act on warnings given due to a similar death at another company the year before. Another company had an issue with the hand-fed press and the HSE sent out warnings about how things could be fixed. Unfortunately, the company decided not to take the warnings seriously and it led to a death of one of their own workers. The incident was completely avoidable if the company had taken steps to make certain the machine would not have an issue with feeding paper through it.
