Winnipeg Free Press: A stagehand's on-the-job fall and serious injury has prompted provincial workplace safety officials to lay charges against the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, a local union and the Crown corporation operating the Centennial Concert Hall.
Each of the three entities faces 20 infractions under Manitoba's Workplace Safety and Health Act (WSHA) and corresponding regulations. The charges were formally put before the provincial court during a brief hearing Thursday morning.
4 comments:
It's hard to believe that a concert hall and union could be so irresponsible when it comes to worker safety. Working in "almost total darkness" is totally unacceptable. There should always be some kind of light. I'm also slightly confused about the fall itself. He was already working in a "below stage area" and then fell almost 15ft? Why would there be a place to fall that far? And more importantly, why wasn't there a railing or any other kind of safety precaution in place? Considering how big of a hazard it sounds like it was, I'm surprised there wasn't another incident sooner.
This sounds like a situation discussed right out of OSHA class. It seems that whenever these accidents happen, the stagehand either did something extremely stupid, or they are working in circumstances that are extremely stupid. For example, this stagehand should not have been working in the crossover is "total darkness." Whether this stagehand knew that they could have fallen 15 ft or not, the circumstances in which he or she was working were clearly unsafe and not smart. There definitely should have been a guard rail in place, and no worker should have been anywhere close to this area in complete darkness. Unfortunately, these accidents happen more often than we would like them to, and the only way to prevent them is to provide more safe environments for workers.
I think it is ridiculous how often we encounter stories like this. At this point, Everyone knows all of the hazards listed in this article lead to preventable accidents. There is no reason for anyone to be working in total darkness or for there not to be any sort of railing were there is a 4 meter drop. This lack of consideration for safety protocol is completely baffling to me and I wonder if there is any new system that could be put in place to combat what seems like common place disregard for safety regulations.
It seems that the media has a lot of scrutiny for entertainment related injuries lately. Between this and the incident (vaguely) related to the Miley Cyrus set.
A scene shop or stage shares a lot of the same hazards as a factory or warehouse or machine shop. Injuries are something that unfortunately happen in industry. Why is it that we tend to hear about entertainment related injuries more often? Obviously the green pages are tailored to entertainment, but in general it seems that media coverage on the entertainment industry seems to be heightened lately.
That being said, the added press on entertainment production safety might be a good thing. Unfortunately, injuries like this are what tend to prompt more changes (and charges).
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