Industry news roundup: week ended 9 Sept 2013:
There are some serious accident claims brewing at not one but two engineering firms thanks to recent injuries suffered by their workers.
First up, an unnamed civil engineering worker was nearly backed over by a tipper truck, leaving him with such serious leg injuries that he needed to be taken to hospital by air ambulance. The poor bastard was off work for seven weeks or so as doctors endeavoured to repair a severed artery and several other injuries, including a massive puncture wound and a seriously damaged thigh muscle.
The Health and Safety Executive just finished prosecuting the man’s employer this month, and not the Swindon-based firm has to face fines of £10,000 for not setting better safety practices in place. This is of course on top of whatever personal injury compensation award the injured man wins from his employer – and heaven knows he’s going to be getting quite a bit of cash as long as he’s got a good personal injury solicitor team working for him.
Meanwhile another engineering firm – this one based in Jarrow – just got slapped with another fine from the HSE after one of the company’s workers mangled his hand quite badly in the inner workings of the manual lathe he was operating. The injured worker in question – 19 year old Jarrow native Jack Ward – dislocated one of his knuckles and broke his finger so badly that it required pins and wires to set it properly.
To this day Mr Ward still hasn’t regained full use of his hand. In fact he’ll need at least one more surgery to correct the problem, and all because his employer couldn’t be arsed to make sure its workers were trained properly or given proper safety guidelines.
Honestly I hope that Mr Ward hires the biggest, meanest personal solicitor injury team he can find and that he drains his employers absolutely dry. There’s no excuse for not looking after your own workers, and his employer definitely needs to be taught a lesson about taking care of its own – and I don’t mean just a slap on the wrist and a nominal fine from the Health and Safety Executive – no, he deserves to walk away with a big, fat personal injury compensation award for all his pain and suffering.
I’ve just got no patience for employers like that. I hope Mr Ward ends up getting that last surgery he needs to help him regain some more regular feeling and function in his poor abused hand.