Camas UK Ltd was asked to pay £6,000 as compensation when one of its workers, Anthony Lacey, met with an accident in May 2007. The engineer broke his thumb in two places in a workplace accident, which resulted in him being absent from work for three months.

The employee’s union and legal experts are of the opinion that the accident took place due to lack of proper communication to the employees. The accident took place after some of the working practices were changed in the company, without informing the employees.

The mishap occurred when Mr. Lacey was asked to replace the face plates on some of the machinery. Earlier, glue was used around the circumference of the pad, but a new practice had recently been introduced by the company where glue was only used at the top and bottom. Mr. Lacey had not been informed of the changed procedure. Due to this, when he tried to crowbar the pad off, the magnet fell on his thumb because he had applied a greater force to it, not knowing that it would come off more easily than it used to under the old practices. The magnet broke the victim’s thumb in two places.

Camas eventually settled the claim out of court. Mr. Lacey is a member of the GMB union, a spokesperson of which, Andy Worth, said that the accident could have been prevented provided the employer had used proper communication. He also stated that such a lack of communication of changed procedures was intolerable, as it could have caused an even more serious accident.

Laura Hadfield from Thompsons Solicitors further commented that it was the duty of the employers to ensure a safe working environment for the employees and to train them on all the procedures, as even a minor communication failure can be lethal.

Robust health and safety training, such as the cdm courses offered by Workplace Law, is crucial to ensure costly incidents like these are avoided in the workplace.