OSHA launches 3rd inspection this year of Rich Products plant in Crest Hill

Federal safety regulators on Wednesday opened their third inspection this year of the Rich Products plant in Crest Hill after a workplace injury earlier this week.

The inspection follows one started two weeks ago after worker Adewale Ogunyemi, 42, of Chicago was killed in an accident while cleaning a machine July 20 at the plant.

Crest Hill Police Chief Ed Clark said reports indicated the machine was on while Ogunyemi was cleaning it about 11 p.m.

“I don’t know if it was a miscommunication,” Clark said. “He was caught in the machine while trying to clean it. He was caught in the conveyor belt roller.”

Clark said Ogunyemi’s death was a “tragic accident.”

Warehouse Workers for Justice brought Ogunyemi’s death into the public eye this week after issuing a statement Tuesday that was critical of working conditions at the Rich Products facility.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration on Wednesday released a regulatory track record at the plant that includes seven citations in the past two years, 28 “recordable injuries” since 2017, and four inspections since July 2019 initiated because of injuries.

The inspection opened Wednesday follows a workplace injury that occurred Monday. Details of the incident were not available.

The company has until the end of August to pay a $43,105 penalty from a settlement that followed four citations issued for an injury in February that required a worker to be hospitalized and also initiated an OSHA inspection. The company previously paid $40,959 in penalties in a settlement following an OSHA inspection that led to three citations for an injury that occurred in July 2019.

Rich Products on Wednesday released data that the company says shows the number of injuries at the Crest Hill pizza product production plant is less than half the food industry average. The company said that it has retrained all workers after February in a drive to improve safety.

“Our focus on safety and training is extensive, ongoing and repeated,” the company said in an emailed statement. “Most recently, following the tragedy with Mr. Ogunyemi, we halted Crest Hill operations for five days and retrained everyone in the facility to make as certain as possible that every associate was aware of and could execute our well-defined safety protocols by physically demonstrating them.”

The food industry average for injuries requiring employees to miss work at a pizza plant is 4.7 incidents per 100 full-time employees, the company said in the statement. The average at the Crest Hill plant has been 1.89 in 2021, 1.9 in 2020, 2.4 in 2019 and 1.4 in 2018.

Ogunyemi is the third worker to die in accidents at the Crest Hill plant since 2016, although the two previous fatalities were among contracted construction crews doing work at the plant. OSHA said its inspections of the two incidents targeted the construction companies and not Rich Products.

Warehouse Workers for Justice this week drew attention to the safety record at the plant, which includes both food production and distribution, when it issued a statement about Ogunyemi’s death.

Ogunyemi’s death previously had gone unreported in the media, with the Will County Coroner’s Office posting no notice of the incident. The coroner’s office on Wednesday would not provide information other than Oguyemi’s name and the date of his death, saying the matter remains under investigation.

Warehouse Workers for Justice issued a public statement Tuesday that mourned Ogunyemi’s death and callied attention to workplace safety problems at the Rich Products plant. The advocacy group for warehouse workers said accused Rich Products of being “a repeat violator of workplace health and safety protections.”

Warehouse Workers for Justice allege that there have been 51 serious workplace injuries at the plant since 2016. Rich Products replied that “all but a handful” of those injuries were minor.