![]() Officials at Austal modified this Metabo grinder by attaching a saw blade with teeth. But Austal officials attached saw blades with teeth, creating a tool that cuts more quickly and can carve rounded edges into metal. The tool was designed to be used with discs that slice through metal, mainly in straight lines. Roughly one-quarter of the shipyard’s more than 4,000 workers still might be using the tool, they say. At least 53 Austal workers have been injured by the tool, losing fingers and suffering deep gashes on their faces, necks and arms, according to injury logs from January 2011 to March 2015 obtained by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting.Īustal managers continue to put the modified grinder in workers’ hands, employees say. “These millers are quite literally an accident waiting to happen,” he wrote to company officials, referring to the tool by its shipyard nickname. In an email three years earlier, Chris Blankenfeld, the company’s top safety manager, called the machine a “ Widow Maker.” For years, managers at Austal USA’s shipyard in Mobile privately fretted about the danger of a tool they’d modified from its intended use. ![]() Credit: Julie Dermansky for Reveal Credit: Julie Dermansky for Revealīut shipyard managers did. “They don’t understand that that tool is the most dangerous tool that I’ve ever put in my hands,” he said. Martin Osborn still works for Austal after losing a finger to a handheld power tool in a workplace accident.
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