Ministry confirms Evras plant reported at least four accidents since December

The Evraz steel mill in Regina has been hit hard by two injuries that sent workers to hospital last week, but those are hardly the only recent safety incidents at the facility.

Including those two, since mid-december, Evraz has reported at least four incidents to Occupational Health and Safety.

The Labour Relations Ministry confirmed that one reported incident occurred on Dec. 16, 2018, with the other following on Jan. 24 of this year. The company has already confirmed that two injuries occurred at the Regina facility on Wednesday and Saturday last week.

An anonymous employee told the Leader-post the Wednesday incident cost an employee an arm, while the second is said to involve broken ribs.

Under occupational health and safety regulations, employers must report serious injuries, fatalities and dangerous occurrences on the job. Serious injuries are those that will require hospital stays of 72 hours or more, or could have killed the worker. Dangerous occurrences are essentially near misses that could have counted as serious injuries.

The ministry did not immediately confirm which of the three categories the December and January incidents fell into, nor did it provide details of what happened.

Evraz declined to comment in any detail when questioned about the January incident.

But the dates match up precisely with those provided by one of the anonymous source who works for the company.

He said the first incident was a bad fall that “should have killed the guy.” He said the man fell about 15 feet and landed on the back of his head.

On Jan. 24, he said, the injured worker was “spit out between turn rolls and a pipe.” He said the man’s legs were badly beaten up.

Evraz spokesman Patrick Waldron said he “could not confirm the accuracy of that report.”

“The health and safety of our employees is EVRAZ North America’s first priority, and we are committed to continually improving our safety culture and practices as we pursue our goal of zero workplace incidents,” Waldron said, discussing last week’s injuries.

Workers’ advocates have drawn on the recent injuries to call attention to the high rate of on-the-job injuries in Saskatchewan.

There were 2,339 injuries reported in the province’s manufacturing and processing industry in 2017, according to government data. More than 18 per cent of those were in the metal forming, shaping and erecting trades.

Both University of Regina professor Sean Tucker and Saskatchewan Federation of Labour president Lori Johb say it’s a reminder Saskatchewan’s workplace culture needs to change.

“What we all want is for this to stop,” Tucker said. “There are too many of these stories in Saskatchewan.”