Wayne Rothering was a few months away from retirement when a machine killed him. He worked on a laminator line at a large Wisconsin furniture factory. He stopped the conveyor and stepped inside the line to fix a torn roll of paper. Behind him, powered rollers that fed 5-foot-by-6-foot slabs of fiberboard into the system continued to spin. As Rothering worked, the rollers caught hold of a board on the conveyor and propelled it into his back. Rothering was crushed to death.
He was among hundreds of U.S. workers to die over the past decade in mishaps that a regulation known as “lockout/tagout” is supposed to prevent. The concept is simple: Before an industrial machine can be serviced, an employee must shut it down and place a lock over its power source. If that isn’t possible, the employee should place a tag telling co-workers to leave the machine off.
Lockouts are designed to prevent employees from being hurt by machines that start unexpectedly. Every year, an average of 85 people are killed and 364 suffer amputations. Violations related to the lockout standard are the most common safety citations issued by OSHA.
Incidents usually happen because employers fail to implement adequate safety measures, writes The Wall Street Journal (Oct. 4, 2024). “They take shortcuts, figure it’s too much trouble to lock it out, or they get pressure to keep productivity moving,” said a former OSHA exec. Companies often minimize downtime with alternatives that allow machines to remain powered during minor servicing.
Sometimes machinery is still operating when workers enter dangerous areas. Two years ago, Leily Lopez-Hernandez was blowing dust off a pizza company’s cooling machine. She went beneath the machine and was decapitated. After, OSHA fined the firm $2.8 million for 29 violations, 17 of which were deemed “willful”—meaning an employer purposefully disregarded regulations or acted with indifference to safety.
“It’s easy to blame the working person for failing to heed a warning or follow a procedure, but we know that’s going to happen, not because they are lazy or stupid, but because there are competing motivations,” said an industry attorney. “If the employer emphasizes production above all, so will the employee.”
Classroom discussion questions:
- You are the operations manager at a manufacturer. What can you do to prevent such injuries and deaths?
- What is the role of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)?