13 fingers lost in 2 years at meatplant

Cartoon / Rod Emmerson

Staff and management at a South Island meat factory are at loggerheads following a number of work-related accidents in which 12 employees have lost a total of 13 fingers.

The Labour Department has confirmed it is investigating 20 complaints of safety breaches at the Talleys-owned South Pacific Meats plant near Invercargill - dating back two years.

"Many of these involved bandsaws - ie, the amputation of fingers or parts of fingers, and serious lacerations to fingers and hands," Southern Regional manager Sheila McBreen-Kerr said.

"This number of incidents shows a long-running disregard for health and safety issues in the use of bandsaws."

The company is disputing the number of amputations, and claims work safety is a priority at the factory - but did not say how many injuries there had been.

Otago Southland Meat Workers Union secretary Gary Davis said workers were being made to work too fast on old equipment - and that was putting them at risk.

"The near-misses that were happening, something needed to be done."

Unfortunately, Occupational Safety and Health said it was powerless to help staff until someone was hurt.

"It was then that we started losing all those fingers," Mr Davis said. No sooner had one employee returned to work after losing a finger than he lost a second appendage on a plant bandsaw, Mr Davis said.

Saw operators normally able to process about three carcasses a minute were being pushed to process up to five, and staff that left were not being replaced, he said.

Mr Davis said a drug testing policy had been introduced by management to create an "alibi" for the accidents in the saw room, as drug abuse had "never been a problem".

The tests were undertaken after the 12 workers had lost their digits, and were off work recovering, or moved to different departments.

"The only guys left were the ones who still have their fingers ... These guys don't come to work stoned, I would say some were casual users at the weekend."

Of the 20 workers tested, 18 tested positive for cannabis.

Plant manager Malcolm Hampton told the Southland Times he rejected the allegations the company was unsafe.