DOJ orders Behr Iron to pay restitution for OSHA violations

Behr Iron & Steel, based in Rockford, Illinois, has been sentenced to five years’ probation and ordered to pay restitution of $350,000 for what the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) calls willful violation of Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) regulations that resulted in the death of an employee. The restitution will be payed to the estate of Reynaldo Hernandez-Ortega, who was killed while cleaning a shredder discharge pit at Behr’s South Beloit, Illinois, auto shredder two years ago.

The company pleaded guilty to the charge in March 2016 and admitted in a plea agreement that it failed to provide the lockout/tagout protection and confined space protection required under OSHA regulations for employees who were cleaning a shredder discharge pit. Behr admitted that those violations caused the death of an employee who was caught in a moving, unguarded conveyor belt.

Behr was previously ordered to pay a $520,000 fine in a related administrative OSHA case.

According to the DOJ, metals processed through Behr’s auto shredder fall onto a conveyor belt located about 10 feet underground in a shredder discharge pit, which was about 6 feet long and 6 feet wide. The shredded materials were moved by a conveyor belt out of the discharge pit and through a sorting process. In the process some metals fall onto the ground of the discharge pit near the conveyor belt. On a daily basis, Behr employees working on the shredding machine were required to clean the discharge pit by shoveling the shredded material onto the running conveyor belt.

On March 10, 2014, Hernandez-Ortega was cleaning the discharge pit when his arm was caught by the unguarded conveyor belt. He was pulled into the machinery and killed.

Behr admitted that no lock or operable emergency shut off switch was in the discharge pit for the conveyor belt and the conveyor belt did not have guards designed to protect employees. Behr also admitted that employees in the discharge pit were not adequately trained to use the shredder or the conveyor belt, and that the company had not developed and implemented confined space protection for employees entering the discharge pit.