A woman working at the Western Sugar Cooperative facility in Torrington was seriously injured after a high fall last week.
This injury comes after another worker died from a fall at Western Sugar’s Lovell facility in January. Wyoming safety inspectors fined the company almost 200 thousand dollars in July for safety violations.
John Ysebaert is with Wyoming Department of Workforce Services, which oversees safety inspectors. He says Western Sugar has recently seen a complete turnover in management.
“They have a new CEO, they have a new human resources person. They have a new senior VP. I do believe as a corporation they are really trying to wrestle with some of these issues. And this change of management is a result.”
Recent reporting by the Casper Star Tribune shows Wyoming safety inspectors have been doing fewer surprise inspections lately. They attribute that to an increase in time-demanding refinery inspections. Workforce Services is also dealing with a high rate of turnover among safety inspectors.
According to the Tribune there were 381 compliance inspections in fiscal year 2010, and only 219 in the 2014 fiscal year.