If the employees under your watch ever ask why they need to wear a high visibility vest this recent OSHA citation may help drive your point home.
Workers Jordy Alexander Castaneda Romero and Juan Carlos Figueroa Gutierrez died when a dump truck struck them both, pushing them into a nine-foot deep trench at a sewer repair site in Boston.
One of the many violations OSHA found that caused the incident was the company didn’t require employees to wear high-visibility vests.
OSHA fined a water utilities construction company $1.3 million following the two workers’ deaths.
OSHA is accusing Atlantic Coast Utilities LLC/Advanced Utilities Inc., its predecessor company Shannon Construction, their owner Laurence Moloney and successor company, Sterling Excavation LLC, of multiple willful, repeat, serious and other-than serious violations.
Because of the severity of the recent incident and the employer’s history of violations, OSHA used its egregious citation policy, allowing the agency to propose separate penalties for each instance of a violation.
OSHA inspected Atlantic Coast Utilities six times and cited the company for 14 willful, repeat and serious violations prior to the fatal incident.
Those violations led to fines of $81,242, of which $73,542 was left unpaid.
Moloney and his companies ignored the citations and demands for abatement of the hazards.
