Business fined for OSHA violations
A Gulf Breeze business was recently fined nearly $150,000 by the U.S. Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) for safety violations found at a school construction site in Milton.
A.E. New Jr. Inc. was cited for cited for three willful safety violations with penalties totaling $132,000.
OSHA determined that competently trained employees saw violations that jeopardized safety but did not take corrective action. The violations included:
- Employees working on an improperly erected scaffold
- Employees working from a makeshift platform
- Employees using a forklift to lift them to the building's roof without using required fall protection equipment
OSHA inspectors also cited the company for four serious safety violations with proposed penalties of $10,000.
These violations included:
- Allowing employees to work on a roof edge without fall protection
- Using a pallet on a forklift as a platform for employees
- Having employees access the scaffold in an unsafe manner
- Allowing debris to accumulate around the worksite
A $4,000 repeat safety violation was proposed for allowing employees to work near overhead brick laying operations without wearing hard hats. The company was cited for this same violation in 2004.
"Occupational fatalities caused by falls remain a serious public health problem and one of the leading causes of traumatic occupational death," said James Borders, OSHA's area director in Jacksonville. "OSHA wants employers to correct harmful situations before employees are injured."
The company had 15 working days from receipt of the citations to contest them and the proposed penalties.