South Jersey Manufacturing Company Cites OSHA Fines In Announcing Layoffs

A South Jersey manufacturing company that has been hit with $1,922,895 in penalties by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) announced layoffs Tuesday morning, citing the high penalty as a reason it was letting 13 percent of its staff, or 51 of its 367 unionized employees, go.

“The size of OSHA’s fine as it stands today has forced the Company to take these extreme measures,” Pennsauken-based Aluminum Shapes LLC, said in a release. “We have grown the employee count from 376 in January 2015 to 480 in June 2017. Now, we are being forced to undo that growth.”

The fine is for 51 safety and health violations, including the hospitalization of two employees who were hospitalized as a result of workplace incidents, OSHA announced late last month. OSHA further stated that since 2011, it inspected the facility eight times and cited Aluminum Shapes for 60 violations and assessed $516,753 in penalties.

Aluminum Shapes previously responded to those allegations by saying it took steps to improve safety throughout its facility, including tripling the number of safety professionals, hiring an OSHA specialist to help guide its compliance efforts, and adding a widely-respected safety professional to its management team.

The safety professionals were not among the layoffs announced Tuesday morning. However, layoffs did include 10 members of the front office staff, including four managers.

“We care deeply about the safety of our employees,” a company spokesperson said in the statement. “As part of our ongoing facility improvements, we’ve invested time and money toward safer production processes and equipment. In addition to our regular safety TPMs to keep our facility in code, we devoted thousands of man hours toward training and installing guards and other essential safety measures.”

The company also said it plans to challenge the citations and fine, saying, “We have made visible and dramatic safety improvements, and we intend to vigorously defend ourselves.”

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