A logging company has been fined for health and safety failures ahead of a 23-year-old trainee's death in 2022, putting apprentice safety back in the spotlight after another case involving a death wrapped up earlier this year.
Button Logging Limited was sentenced at Christchurch District Court yesterday over the death of Josh Masters.
"Masters was fixing the hydraulics on a log loader when the vehicle's boom fell and crushed him at Balmoral Forest in North Canterbury in January 2022," WorkSafe New Zealand said today.
"Masters had nearly completed his diesel mechanic apprenticeship with Button Logging Limited ... The 23-year-old was told to position the loader's forks vertically to gain access for the repairs, but the boom fell when the forks collapsed."
WorkSafe investigated and charged the company under the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015.
"The company didn't have an effective procedure for the repairs, and when Mr Masters asked for help on how to proceed, he was given inadequate instruction and supervision," the watchdog found.
Button Logging was fined $302,500 over the incident, with $278,000 in reparations ordered.
WorkSafe's acting national investigations manager Casey Broad said Masters "deserved better".
"This tragic case is about the failure to manage a critical risk — it was utterly preventable and avoidable," he said.
"As a result of that, a family is now deprived of a son, grandson, brother, and partner."
The WorkSafe statement referenced another apprentice's death that same year.
Ethan Perham-Turner, 19, was killed on a Bay of Plenty worksite after being crushed by 350kg of timber framing in March 2022.
The teenager was working for Inspire Building, who provided building labour for Thorne Group — the project's main contractor.
Thorne Group was fined $210,000 in February and ordered to pay $130,000 of reparations to Perham-Turner's family — with an additional $15,072 set to go to another apprentice. Inspire Building was fined $30,000 due to "financial incapacity".
"Apprentices are the future generation, and companies that take on apprentices need to recognise they have a responsibility to look after them as they do with their own employees and put health and safety first," Broad said.
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