R.J. Cyr Company Fined After Worker Death

Hello time traveller!!
This article is 2500 days old.
The information listed below is likely outdated and has been preserved for archival purposes.

Google Streetview

R.J. Cyr Company Inc. has been fined after a worker was killed on the job in November 2016.

According to investigators the 51-year-old Windsor man had been assigned to do touch-up work on a “conveyor skid.” The skid was essentially the steel frame or base for a conveyor; it was 33.5 inches wide and 22 feet, 9 inches long, weighing 1,228 pounds.

The worker used an overhead five-ton crane to lift one skid from a pile, and placed it on its side on a support structure, and a second skid was similarly positioned. The overhead crane was then detached from the skids. The skids were not clamped to the support structure or otherwise secured when the crane was detached.

As the worker was securing one of the skids to the support structure with clamps, it tipped toward the worker, knocking the worker backward and pinning the worker to the concrete floor, and he was killed in the incident.

There was no witness, but it was captured on a security surveillance video.

The Ministry of Labour investigation found no evidence that the worker had been instructed not to disconnect the conveyor skid from the overhead crane until the skid was secured to the support structure.

They say that the company failed as an employer to ensure that the measures and procedures prescribed in the Industrial Establishments Regulation were carried out at a workplace. That section of the regulation states that “machinery, equipment or material that may tip or fall and endanger any worker shall be secured against tipping or falling.”

Following a guilty plea Monday, the company was fined $125,000. 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.