It is amazing that management can be so complacent and even incompetent and still have a job.
This is a situation that went on for months in this new facility, and even years plantwide in plain view of upper management, supervisors and lead persons.
This complaint is about the operation at Warehouse 19. This is a cold storage warehouse where we load and unload customers trailers at a loading dock and also load and unload tropicana product on tropicana flatbeds for transfer between departments.
The forklifts provided to us to do this job were under rated for the load we were hauling. The loads are so heavy, the rear wheels of the forklifts would come off the ground! This was going on for YEARS with full knowledge of managemnt.
I transferred to this department and was being "trained". I was trained to pick TWO crates off of the flatbed and travel BACKWARDS up a ramp with approx a 45degree incline!
The Komatsu electric highlift being used had a MAXIMUM load rating of 4980 pounds, but the 2 crates being hauled were in excess of 6000 pounds!
Keep in mind that the load rating of a forklift is based on a load being centered on the forks, with the forks level, and travelling on a LEVEL surface.
If any of those conditions are not present, the load capacity drops dramatically.
Management at all levels were made fully aware of this hazard on SEVERAL occasions, but production and profit superceded safety. The bean counters made operational policy! If we carried only one box at a time, it would take longer and require more people.
They preach safety as a number 1 priority which is a farce.
Production and cost savings ALWAYS comes before safety at tropicana.
My electric lift shut down on the ramp due to being overloaded and then restarted causing the lift to jerk very hard, tossing the top crate off, leaving 300 gallons of concentrate running all over the ground.
Then, Pete Hayes of HR directs a REPRIMAND for me through Andrew Justice! Only after my union representative Bob Tuttle had a discussion with Pete Hayes, I was not reprimanded.
The story here is, the employee at Tropicana takes the rap for management incompetence!
AND, the ramp going into the warehouse had 2 big holes and loose broken concrete, so when you would drive through it, the load would sway from side to side and/or shift on the forks.
Again, everyone in charge out there knew about this hazard and failed to act, UNTIL I filed an OSHA complaint. Then, and only then did they take swift action to address the problems. [Still not fully corrected].
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