Washington ― Federal workplace safety officials found multiple violations and issued a fine of about $26,500 to a U.S. Postal Service facility in Allen Park this month after a 36-year-old Trenton man and Air Force veteran died of asphyxiation inside a mail-handling machine there in November.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration this past week posted the findings of its probe and inspection of the Postal Service’s Detroit Network Distribution Center in Allen Park, including five violations rated “serious” related to the facility’s “lockout/tagout” procedures and training.
Lockout-tagout is a safety procedure meant to ensure that a machine or piece of equipment is stopped, isolated and powered down prior to employees performing repairs or maintenance work, with the goal of making sure the machine can’t restart and cause harm to an individual.
After the death of Nicholas Acker in November, another employee at the facility alleged that Postal Service management at the Allen Park facility regularly pressured staff to look for fallen letters while heavy machinery with massive conveyor belts was operating.
OSHA initially issued a $66,200 penalty to the facility for specific violations, but that total was reduced to $26,481 after an “informal” settlement with the Postal Service this month, according to agency records.
Gary Acker, the father of Nicholas, said he was disappointed with the small penalty for the facility when OSHA found the agency had not been following the rules after his son’s distressing death. An OSHA representative told the family that the Postal Service would be working to correct the lockout-tagout procedures and training, Acker said.
“If they are doing something about it, maybe it might help from someone else getting killed,” Gary Acker said Friday.
“OSHA told me they heard the same thing I did about no one following the rules, but they couldn’t get anyone to testify to it,” Acker said. “No one will stand up and fight with them. It’s like no real fine, and we can’t sue them, so it’s just gonna be swept under the table.”
‘That’s the only fine?’ Rep. Dingell says after learning of the Postal Office fine amount
U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Ann Arbor, was aghast at the fine amount, calling it a slap on the wrist.
“Somebody lost their life, and that’s the only fine?” Dingell said. “I want to know what is going to be done to ensure this sorting station and those across the country are going to be safe, and no more lives are lost.”
The OSHA violations included a finding that the postal facility did not ensure that the company’s lockout-tagout procedures were used to control “hazardous” mechanical movement of a certain conveyor belt system when maintenance employees conducted repair work, such as repairing the metal lacing on the belt. The facility also didn’t fully train employees and supervisors on relevant safety measures.
“Employees working on and near the Alpha conveyors, when performing mail search activities, were exposed to caught-in hazards while the conveyors were running or if a conveyor were to unexpectedly start up,” the violation states.
Last year, an autopsy found that mechanical asphyxiation was the cause of death for Nicholas Acker, who was found wedged between a guard rail and a conveyor belt inside a mail-handling machine at the Detroit Network Distribution Center in Allen Park, with his body covered in lacerations, bruises and abrasions.
His family members and lawmakers have expressed disgust that it took employees eight hours to discover the body in the machine.
Acker, 36, spent nine years in the U.S. Air Force as a mechanic on F-16 fighter jets, his father said. With the Postal Service, he served as a mail-processing equipment mechanic.
Acker’s co-worker, Matt Stiffler of Unadilla Township in Livingston County, told The Detroit News in January that he thinks his colleague went up onto a catwalk-type platform to collect stray pieces of mail that had fallen off a conveyor belt.
Then while standing up, Acker possibly lost his footing, fell backward and his hooded sweatshirt or something else caught on the machinery and pulled him into it, Stiffler said.
Stiffler, who trained Acker, said he submitted a written complaint to his union a couple of months before Acker’s death, arguing it’s too dangerous to retrieve mail while the heavy machinery is running.
“It can rip your body in half,” Stiffler told The News. “If he would have had somebody with him … this never would have happened because the other guy would have shut the machine off…”
Michigan senator demands inspector general review of Postal Office safety rules
When Acker didn’t return from work on Nov. 8, his fiancée went to the Allen Park facility and waited outside the gates for three hours, watching emergency responders arrive, before she was notified of Acker’s death, according to his family. The couple had gotten engaged just 10 days before he died.
U.S. Sen. Gary Peters, D-Bloomfield Township, wrote May 18 to the Postal Service Office of Inspector General, seeking a review of postal facility safety measures, for continued accounting of the lockout-tagout protocols relevant to Acker’s death, and for the watchdog office to conduct field visits in Michigan, including the center in Allen Park.
Peters is the top Democrat on the Senate panel with oversight of the U.S. Postal Service.
“Every employee of USPS should know that their workplace will be held to the highest safety standards and that they will be able to return home without harm each day after serving the American public,” Peters wrote.
mburke@detroitnews.com
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Dad disappointed by OSHA fine in son’s Postal Office death in Allen Park
Reporting by Melissa Nann Burke, The Detroit News / The Detroit News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
