Skip to content
Business
Link copied to clipboard

Philadelphia firm cited for unsafe conditions

A Philadelphia rebar-manufacturing company was cited for 54 safety violations today, including the failure to properly maintain cranes.

A Philadelphia rebar-manufacturing company was cited for 54 safety violations today, including the failure to properly maintain cranes.

"When we got in there, we found the cranes were in deplorable condition," said Al D'Imperio, director of the Philadelphia area office of the U.S. Labor Department's Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

"It was bad," D'Imperio said.

The company, MJ Associates Inc., a Philadelphia subsidiary of Re-Steel Supply Co. Inc., of Eddystone, faces potential fines of $159,000. It was not shut down.

"Obviously, we are very concerned," said John Jardine, an official with Re-Steel Supply.

"We're very serious about employee safety," Jardine said. He said inspectors were in the facility for six months, but the company just received citations today.

The citations to MJ Associates come at a time of increased attention on crane safety.

This month, five workers and one bystander have been killed in crane accidents. Four workers died at a Houston refinery when a 30-story crane collapsed.

An average of 22 construction workers die a year from crane-related injuries, according to the Center for Construction Research and Training, an organization affiliated with the AFL-CIO.

The cranes at the MJ facility, in the 700 block of East Venango Street, are not the same type of towering cranes that have collapsed at construction sites.

Instead, these cranes are more like overhead indoor mounted trolleys used to move, in this case, thousands of pounds of steel rebar across a factory floor.

The OSHA citations paint a picture of a workplace in disrepair and disarray, unsafe for its 49 employees.

"The facility operated on the basis of only making 'Band-Aid' repairs to cranes that could not continue to function," one citation said.

There were no regular tests of the cranes' hoist ropes, hooks, and load-bearing capacities, the citations said.

Employees have had serious falls from flat-bed trailers in the facility, where they would stand while loading and unloading bundles of steel rebar, according to another citation.

Propane heaters were located near flammable paints, and workers were allowed to smoke near the paints.

While some doors appeared to be exits, they led to dead-ends. An exit door, jammed shut with a pin, could not be opened from the inside. "Company management struggled for several minutes to get the pin out and the door open," one citation said.

Meanwhile, the place was a mess with scrap and debris on the floors, including improperly cleaned-up spills of flammable liquid and rags soaked with flammable liquids, the citations said.

Other problems included a lack of safeguards on rotating equipment and poorly repaired electrical wiring. "Splices were wrapped with vinyl tape only," a citation said.

D'Imperio said an employee's complaint led the department to send inspectors in January.

He said the company showed OSHA inspectors reports from outside consultants offering suggestions on facility safety, but MJ Associates officials apparently did not follow their consultants' suggestions.

Of the 54 citations, three were "willful." OSHA issues a willful violation when an employer exhibits plain indifference to or intentional disregard for employee safety and health.