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Here's a piece I want to share. It was written by David Leroux, an 18-year-old John Abbott College student whose right hand was destroyed in a press in a meat-packing plant. I have also attached a companion article which demonstrates exactly how Quebec's provincial workplace health and safety commission was complicit.
The summer job that changed my life
St. Lazare resident David Leroux was working at a summer job at Vaudreuil-Dorion’s Premier Meats when an industrial accident cost him his right hand. He is writing this in the hope that it will alert his fellow jobseekers to the dangers inherent in the workplace.
By David Leroux
July 24, 2007. I turned the key and yawned as the digital clock of my car read 5:25 a.m. It was another early drive to my summer job but I was already looking forward to its end since I knew that I’d be with my dad and brother after work, and that we’d be going white-water rafting. I punched in at 6:30 and at 7:00 a.m. I began to work. I went to my station thinking I would be unwrapping liver, it sucked but, hey it’s safer than cutting chops on a saw, right?... I started unwrapping but after a couple of minutes I was told by the man in charge of the station that I was too slow. I was told to go to the end of the meat press to remove the product. I nodded my head in agreement and went where he indicated.
The machine I was assigned to was called a meat press. The machine uses hydraulic pressure to press and form slabs of meat into manageable blocks of meat to slice. At the end of the machine there is a hatch where the meat is forced out and slides down a trough onto a table for the next operation.
When I arrived at the end of the machine, the “lead hand” instructed me to take a meat hook and manually take the meat out after it was pressed to speed things up. I noticed that the trough had fallen off and when I told the “lead hand” about it he told me not to worry and to just do what I had been told since it was almost lunchtime. Crazy eh?... but I wasn’t worried because there were many safeties around all exit and entry points to the machine. It never occurred to me not to trust the more experienced workers around me. (This person had actually been foreman in the past and therefore had years of experience and knowledge regarding the workings of the machinery).
In reality, I was sticking my hand into a machine with nothing in place to stop things from going wrong. What I had not been told was that there was a key which, when pushed in and turned in this machine, cancelled all safeties. The key was only supposed to be used during maintenance and never during production. This key had in fact been used to speed up production the Friday before and had even been broken in the machine, therefore permanently canceling the safeties. No one could tell that the machine was now a safety hazard because the broken piece of the key was inside the lock and therefore not visible! Although the existence of the broken key and cancelled safeties had been reported to maintenance, and those in authority, the machine had not been fixed by the following Tuesday when it was put back into production.
It happened so fast… the top hydraulic part of the machine caught my right hand on the wrist and drove it down with a crunch. The pain hit me like getting hit by a tidal wave of needles, as I writhed in pain with only two things in my mind; should I leave it in and hope the operator has taken his hand off the switches, or pull with all my might?
The ambulance ride was a blur and I woke up in a hospital bed, in the middle of the night to my mom having to break the news to me that my hand had had to be amputated.
The CSST investigation concluded that, “dangerous work methods were used to improve productivity. This increase in productivity was achieved to the detriment of the safety of workers, notably those having little experience. The investigation also showed that training and supervision were inadequate.”
I am not writing this article for pity or revenge. I’m hoping that once you’ve read this you’ve realized the dangers that can be present in a workplace. No summer job or paycheck is worth the loss of a limb or life. Even if you believe that you are doing everything in your power to take care of your wellbeing, doesn’t mean the company is. As students we are often the most vulnerable employees. We don’t often see the dangers or realize that we can say no to any task. Always remember — your safety comes first!
CSST was monitoring Premier at the time: report
By Jim Duff and Nick Mayes
VALLEYFIELD — The machine that cost 19-year-old David Leroux his right hand had already been faulted in a CSST inspector’s report filed prior to the July 24, 2007 industrial accident at Vaudreuil-Dorion’s Premier Meats.
According to the CSST report on the workplace accident obtained by The Hudson/St. Lazare Gazette, CSST inspectors visited the Premier plant eight times in 2007 and filed several reports regarding what were termed “important security elements.”
While the initial visit was a routine inspection related to the regional CSST’s ongoing campaign to make workplaces safer, the followups were part of what CSST spokesman Ronald Hart termed an action plan to securitize the plant’s machinery.
Premier’s owner Paul Dejong said he was extremely sorry for the accident and insisted the plant was as safe as he could make it.
“Accidents are what they are,” Dejong said following the incident. “It takes people that work with equipment and assist with equipment to be very observant and to have respect for the equipment.”
Premier’s owner confirmed that the CSST was working in the plant prior to David’s loss of his hand. “As a matter of fact, before the accident happened, the equipment being used had gone through a major security update, along with I believe two other pieces of equipment.
“This is part of a project that we entered into with the CSST to go beyong what normal standards should be,” Dejong said, adding that the machine had been out of commission for roughly a month prior to the accident as a result of the CSST’s inspections. Most of the CSST’s visits came fater the accident, he added.
According to the CSST incident report, the machine David had been assigned to clear was knowingly being operated by Premier with a key broken in a switch position that locked the system into a maintenance mode and bypassed the safety interlock.
The interlock, known as a two-hand anti tie-down, and widely used throughout industry, requires requires that two buttons widely spaced be pressed within a few milliseconds of each other and then both be released before another cycle can start.
According to one manufacturer familiar with its use, it prevents a lazy operator taping down one button and continuing operation. It is very difficult for two individual people to trigger a cycle.
The CSST also faulted Premier for failing to provide adequate training for their summer staff, a charge Leroux confirms.
“I took the day off on my birthday and the next day they asked how old I was. I told them I was eighteen and they put me on the machine. They showed me the two buttons and that was pretty much it,” he said.
David also recalls seeing the green-hatted CSST inspectors throughout the plant as he worked.“I kept seeing people coming and looking around the plant and I thought they may be investors or new owners of the plant,” he said.
When Leroux began working at the plant last May, he thought he was going to be involved strictly in the packing part of the operation, filling boxes with already processed and plastic wrapped meat and sealing them. “The worst that could happen to you there was that you’d drop a box on your foot or something like that,” he said. “In production there were all sorts of things that could go wrong.”
Although he’s remarkably calm in describing the loss of his right hand, Leroux admits to feelings of anger when Dejong came to his house one night, trying to be jovial and offering hockey tickets. He says he still has dreams about the worst moments of the accident and is skittish about closed spaces and things like sliding doors.
Always a writer, David started to write about what had happened, first in a series of articles in The Bandersnatch, John Abbott College’s student newspaper. Those first accounts went into graphic and gory detail about the specifics of the accident, but he’s changed his tone since. “I figured if I was going to make people want to read what I had to say I would have to be more profound.”
He claims to be adapting well. “I try to do most stuff on my own,” he said. “With my prosthetic hand I can play X-Box 360 and whip any kid. Actually I can’t even imagine playing without it.”
A week after he was released from the hospital he woke up early one morning and shocked his parents when they found him cooking bacon and eggs. “I was holding my arm up like this, I taught myself how to do it,” he said, demonstrating manipulating a frying pan and spatula with one arm up in the air.
The anger is never far from the surface as Leroux recalls how Premier would hire more students when production was heavy. “I believe Premier was given options and they just looked at the costs,” he said.
Dejong said he’s done everything that could reasonably be expected to mitigate David’s loss of his hand. “The CSST is basically an insurance company. I believe there is a benefirt that David will get for the rest of his life.”
He is anxious to dispel safety concerns. “I would welcome the readers who have concerns to come down to our plant and see what we’re doing. It’s an unfortunate thing that happened.” |
