Serious injuries to a contract labourer operating behind picket lines and under the supervision and control of Mersey Docks and Harbour Company resulted in a £12,000 fine for the MDHC yesterday.
Prosecution was brought before South Sefton Magistrates Court by the Health and Safety Executive under Section 3(1) of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974.
MDHC is 13.87% owned by the Government. In March, the Department of the Environment told Bootle MP Joe Benton
"The number of accidents recorded by the Health and Safety Executive as occurring at the Royal Seaforth Container Terminal and Royal Seaforth Forest Products Terminal in 1995-96 was one and in 1996-97 there were eight."
Since the mass dismissal of MDHC employees in September 1995, stevedoring operations have been carried out by contract labour.
On 20 August 1996 Perry Birch, an employee of the Warrington-based contractor PNT, was assigned to the Forest Products Terminal. PNT was one of 3 separate stevedoring companies discharging copper from the "Laser Atlantic" in the Port of Liverpool.
While Birch helped to guide a fork lift truck into a stack of copper on the quayside and instructed the driver, another truck accidently knocked a 3.8 tonne bundle from a nearby stack, pinning the PNT man to the first truck. Birch was trapped for 25 minutes and suffered two broken legs and a broken ankle.
HSE Inspector Robert Duckworth told magistrates the accident arose from inadequate planning which allowed trucks to approach stacks from different directions without segregation of work teams.
Pleading guilty, MDHC accepted that Section 3(1) had been breached through an unsafe system of intermediate quayside storage, despite an initial accident assessment by their own supervisor which found no such fault. The company denied any failure of planning, stating the accident was caused by "transient carelessness" of the fork lift driver, as well as human error by the crane operator who failed to stop discharging when the quay became congested, and Mr. Birch himself.
All shipments were pre-planned by MDHC through extensive contacts with
shipping lines.
Contract stevedores including Mr. Birch received safety manuals, videos,
HSE notes, and training with fork lifts. This included the instruction "Never
place arms, hands, or body in unsafe positions."
A handwritten company risk assessment before August 96 noted the danger of quay hands standing between truck and stack, although this was not typed and distributed until after the accident.
Mersey Docks cited favorable correspondence from the HSE dating from
1989 - 1993.
Despite their lengthy submission, the company were fined 60% of the maximum
penalty under the Act and costs of £597.92 were awarded to the HSE.
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