An Orillia manufacturer has been convicted and fined $90,000 after one of its employees was "seriously injured" due to unsafe workplace procedures.
Kubota Materials Canada Corporation, a foundry and materials fabricator located on Commerce Road along Highway 11, pleaded guilty at a recent hearing.
According to a media release from the Ministry of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development, a worker at Kubota was “seriously injured” while manually clearing a blockage from an industrial machine.
Contrary to safety procedures, the machine did not have a guard to prevent access to the machine’s moving parts.
The incident happened Oct. 2, 2021 while a worker was operating a "Sieving Classifier", a machine used in the process of refining a powdered substance called TXAX, an asbestos alternative used as friction material in brake and clutch components of machines and automobiles.
While operating the machine, the worker noticed it was blocked, as the collection bucket below the rotary valve was not filling with material.
The worker attempted to manually clear the blockage at the bottom of the machine, which housed an exposed moving part that was not equipped with a guard.
As a result, the worker was seriously injured by the machine’s moving parts.
Kubota “failed as an employer to ensure that the machine was equipped with and guarded by a guard or other device that prevented access to the exposed moving parts,” notes the media release.
As a result, the employer “endangered the safety of the worker,” thereby violating section 24 of the regulation for industrial establishments, contrary to section 25(1)(c) of the Occupational Health and Safety Act.
The company was convicted on Jan. 19, 2023 and the media release was issued last week.
In addition to the $90,000 fine, the court also imposed a 25 per cent victim fine surcharge as required by the Provincial Offences Act.
The surcharge is credited to a special provincial government fund to assist victims of crime.
Neither a union representative from Kubota nor a media relations official from the Ministry of Labour returned requests for comment prior to publication of this article.
About 250 people work at the Orillia Kubota facility.
