at Del Monte Farm Shop in Mendota employees work hundreds of days without incident but when there occurs a few minor injuries in 2006 erased the 742 consecutive days they had earned, they decided to improve their own record by earning a top award from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
A safety committee consisted of the men and women at the farm shop reviewed safety regulations and began implementing new procedures that finally led them to the distinction as one of only a handful of Illinois companies to achieve OSHA’s Safety and Health Achievement Recognition Program award.
SHARP certification required website visits and reviews of safety procedures along with an increasing number of days without incident. Full-time and the seasonal employees fine-tuned their safety procedures and policies to fulfill all of the required OSHA regulations along with a goal of zero lost time days. By April 30, 2010, the new procedures not only made a new record of 1,319 days without incident but also earned them the SHARP designation.
The employees were preventable by Del Monte and OSHA officials at a luncheon Tuesday where the award was given along with individual awards to each full-time employee marking the number of days working without incident since the shop started counting.
Del Monte first started the Mendota vegetable processing plant in year 1948. The farm shop is utilized for contracting, harvesting, planting and delivering peas, sweet corn and lima beans to the Mendota plant. The farm operations plant comprises of five salaried and 11 regular hourly employees with a peak seasonal employment of 55 people.
They do the harvesting of crops from 177 separate growers within a 40-mile radius of Mendota and from an early sourcing irrigated area near Manito.
A safety committee consisted of the men and women at the farm shop reviewed safety regulations and began implementing new procedures that finally led them to the distinction as one of only a handful of Illinois companies to achieve OSHA’s Safety and Health Achievement Recognition Program award.
SHARP certification required website visits and reviews of safety procedures along with an increasing number of days without incident. Full-time and the seasonal employees fine-tuned their safety procedures and policies to fulfill all of the required OSHA regulations along with a goal of zero lost time days. By April 30, 2010, the new procedures not only made a new record of 1,319 days without incident but also earned them the SHARP designation.
The employees were preventable by Del Monte and OSHA officials at a luncheon Tuesday where the award was given along with individual awards to each full-time employee marking the number of days working without incident since the shop started counting.
Del Monte first started the Mendota vegetable processing plant in year 1948. The farm shop is utilized for contracting, harvesting, planting and delivering peas, sweet corn and lima beans to the Mendota plant. The farm operations plant comprises of five salaried and 11 regular hourly employees with a peak seasonal employment of 55 people.
They do the harvesting of crops from 177 separate growers within a 40-mile radius of Mendota and from an early sourcing irrigated area near Manito.
Comments
Post a Comment