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SAFETY / OSHA - 03/12/10

OSHA levies $147,000 in fines to ABC Professional Tree Service Inc. in Cleveland for risks to workers

The U.S. Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has cited ABC Professional Tree Service Inc. in Cleveland with alleged violations of federal workplace safety and health standards. Proposed fines total $147,000.

OSHA began an inspection in September 2009 after receiving allegations of workers being exposed to high-voltage power lines while trimming trees without having proper personnel flagging traffic around the tree trimming vehicles. OSHA has issued the employer one serious and two repeat citations.

The repeat violations, with proposed penalties of $140,000, address workers being exposed to hazards from an aerial lift truck in which the operator actually hit the high-voltage electrical line with his hard hat during his descent after trimming trees. The company also has been cited for failing to provide a designated worker assigned to observe and provide proper warning to the operator while ascending and descending in the bucket lift. OSHA issues repeat violations when it finds a substantially similar violation of any standard, regulation, rule or order at any of an employer's other facilities in federal enforcement states when that employer has been cited in the past.

The serious violation, with proposed penalties of $7,000, addresses the employer allowing inadequately trained workers to operate the lift bucket truck in and around high-voltage power lines. An OSHA violation is serious if death or serious physical harm can result from a hazard an employer knew or should have known exists.

"Violations that expose working people to high-voltage power lines and other life-threatening hazards cannot be tolerated," said OSHA Area Director Rob Medlock in Cleveland. "The cost of employee and family health is far too great a price to pay for anyone to ignore these hazards, particularly when such problems have been identified in the past."

ABC Professional Tree Service Inc., headquartered in Houston, Texas, specializes in providing power line tree trimming and landscaping services nationwide, and employs about 2,000 workers. The company has been inspected by OSHA seven times since 2005. Three of those inspections were initiated as a result of workplace fatalities. The fatalities were in Cleveland in April 2007, in Cincinnati, Ohio, in June 2006 and in Bridgeport, Conn., in October 2007.

ABC Professional Tree Service has 15 business days from receipt of the citations and penalties to comply, request an informal conference with OSHA's area director or contest the findings before the independent Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission.

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