When a one hundred years old law is as relevant today at it was when first framed
What happened?
A 16 year-old boy was working at a corrugated sheet metal manufacturer. He was asked to clean a printing machine. He had not been trained in how to use the machine but had observed that his colleagues cleaned it by wrapping a cloth around their hands, while the machine’s rolling speed was reduced to a slow roll.
While he was cleaning the device using this method, the end of the rag became caught in a trapping point between two rollers and drew his hand into the machine. It took twenty minutes for the fire brigade to arrive and free him before he could be taken to hospital.
As a result of the accident he broke one finger and received serious crush injuries to two other fingers. He has undergone several operations to straighten his fingers, but has been told that his right hand will be permanently disfigured.
The boy was not eligible to work in an industrial undertaking until the end of the academic year, and so was classified as a child.
In order to prevent similar accidents from taking place, the company created a safe system of work, which states that the machine must be turned off while it is being cleaned. It has also installed a protective bar, which prevents access to the trapping point.
The HSE inspector said “This case should act as a reminder that it’s illegal to employ a child in an industrial undertaking.
Legal Outcome
The company pleaded guilty to breaching s2(1) of the HSWA 1974, reg.3(1) of the MHSWR 1999, and s1 of the Employment of Women, Young Persons and Children Act 1920 for employing a child in an industrial undertaking. Magistrates fined the firm a total of £12,000 and ordered it to pay £3451 in costs.
What can we learn from what happened?
The employment of ‘young persons’ introduces additional risks that need to be managed, but this accident happened to someone legally defined in law as a ‘child’. There is every chance that the same accident would have occurred had the boy been legally employed, but either way this case is a rare example of the use of a law that was framed about a hundred years before.
The controls the company put in place after the accident were obvious and should have been in place before – don’t clean a machine that is not turned off and have guarding. Not difficult, and probably a reason why the HSE were keen to cite so many legal breaches.
Source of Information
SHP Online