A tortilla company in Brooklyn, N.Y., has been hit with $62,000 in proposed federal fines stemming from the death of a worker who was killed in January when he fell into an industrial mixing machine.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration said the most serious violation found by the agency was Tortilleria Chinantla’s failure to install a guard barrier on the mixer to prevent workers from getting caught in fast-moving machinery.
“Proper and effective machine guarding would have eliminated this hazard and prevented this young worker’s death,” said Kay Gee, OSHA’s area director for Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens, in a news release. “This was a clearly recognizable hazard that should have been addressed.”
That infraction, which carries a penalty of $42,000, was classified as “willful,” the most severe violation issued by the agency.
As The New York Times reports, the victim was Juan Baten, a 22-year-old Guatemalan immigrant who had a wife and a 7-month-old daughter. He was killed after he fell into a machine that mixes tortilla dough and got caught in its churning mechanism.
The factory was closed immediately after the fatal accident but has since reopened.
The company’s owner, Erasmo Ponce, a Mexican immigrant with a rags-to-riches story who founded the business with his brother in 1992, is considered a folk hero in Mexico and has donated to community causes here and in his hometown of Puebla, according to the New York Daily News.
“He [Baten] wasn’t just a worker for us,” Ponce said shortly after the accident. “We are like family here. We have Thanksgiving and Christmas celebrations together. I’ll make sure his wife and daughter have what they need.”
Ponce told the Times he had been working with OSHA to improve safety conditions at his factory.
“Everything they have recommended we do, we’ve done,” he said. “We are complying with everything.”
Company representatives have met with agency officials to discuss the violations but have not resolved the case, an OSHA spokesman said.
Ponce’s lawyer, Manuel Portela, said he was trying reduce the fines in part by persuading OSHA officials to downgrade the major charge from “willful” to “serious.”
OSHA officials also announced that they found 26 violations at two other Brooklyn tortilla companies that they investigated after the Baten’s death.
Buena Vista Tortillas Corp. was cited on 14 violations, including 13 “serious” charges, and faces $39,000 in proposed fines. The other company, La Tortilleria Mexicana Los Tres Hermanos Corp., was charged with 12 serious violations that would bring fines of up to $33,600.
“What is particularly disturbing is that we found a number of similar hazards at all three facilities,” Gee said.
The OSHA spokesman told the Times that Buena Vista has said it will contest the citations, but La Tortilleria Mexicana has not responded to the charges. OSHA’s rules give employers 15 business days after being notified of violations to comply with or contest the findings, or to seek a meeting with the agency.
CHRISTINE YOUNG
