Like déjà vu all over again for MA contractor (7/14)
“An unguarded excavation is only seconds away from becoming a grave”
A Massachusetts contractor with a long history of violating workplace safety standards faces a total of $354,000 in new proposed fines from OSHA, chiefly for exposing its employees to cave-in hazards at work sites in Cambridge and Framingham. Since 2000, P. Gioioso & Sons Inc., which is primarily engaged in the construction of underground water and sewer mains, had been cited seven times for repeat violations of OSHA's trenching and excavation safety standards prior to the citations resulting from these most recent inspections.
"Time and again, this employer has chosen to ignore the law and, by doing so, placed its workers' lives at risk," said Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health Dr. David Michaels. "Employers who ignore basic, common-sense and legally required safeguards will face substantial fines and consequences."
The Cambridge inspection was opened when an OSHA inspector observed a Gioioso employee working in an unprotected trench on Kimball Street. During the inspection, a section of the trench wall collapsed while the employee was still in the trench. The second inspection, at Grant and C Streets in Framingham, began after a concerned passer-by informed OSHA of workers in an unguarded trench. In both cases, OSHA found that the trenches lacked cave-in protection and a ladder or other safe means for workers to exit the trenches.
As a result, OSHA has cited P. Gioioso & Sons Inc. for four willful violations, each carrying the maximum allowable penalty of $70,000.
"An unguarded excavation is only seconds away from becoming a grave," said Marthe Kent, OSHA's New England regional administrator. "While the worker in the Cambridge trench was fortunate not to have been injured when the trench's sidewall collapsed, worker safety must not and can never be left to fortune.”
The contractor also has been cited for five serious violations, with $32,000 in fines, for allowing employees to be exposed to being struck by the counterweight of an excavator at the Cambridge work site and a variety of other hazards at the Framingham work site. \