OSHA fines Maumee plant $200K for safety violations

7/28/2017

Maumee Assembly and Stamping in 2012. The company has been fined $200,000 by federal regulators for 10 workplace safety violations this year.

THE BLADE
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A Maumee stamping plant has been fined more than $200,000 by federal regulators for 10 workplace safety violations this year, two of which led to employee injuries.

Nine of the violations against Maumee Assembly & Stamping LLC were labeled “serious” but the most recent one was labeled “willful.”

The citations and fines came after inspections this year by the Toledo office of the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration. The fines totaled $211,857, among the bigger fines levied among local companies.

Maumee Stamping owner Stanley Chlebowski could not be reached for comment on Thursday. He can contest the citations and the fines.

According to OSHA, the first injury occurred in January when an employee sustained a severe ankle injury when metal blanks shifted and slid off a table because of unstable stacking. The second occurred in March when an employee’s thumb was crushed in between a shaker table and the die, OSHA said.

The violations cited included hazards created by improper stacking or storage of parts that could shift and fall and hurt employees working nearby, failure to protect employees from injury on machines, failure to have a program of regular inspections of equipment, and failure to train workers on safe machine operations.

Maumee Assembly & Stamping was a former Ford Motor Co. stamping plant that was closed and then bought and reopened in 2010 by Mr. Chlebowski.

Contact Valentin Ornelas, Jr., at: vornelas@theblade.com or 419-724-6050.