Jan 30, 2020   SOURCE: BusinessWire

Aluminum Shapes Response to OSHA Press Release

Yesterday OSHA’s Marlton Area Office issued a press release regarding recent citations issued to Aluminum Shapes. In an effort to interject some transparency in this process, Aluminum Shapes has released the following statement:

Aluminum Shapes wholly disagrees with the statements made by Ms. Dixon-Roderick on behalf of OSHA’s Marlton Area Office. The notion that Aluminum Shapes has disregarded its legal responsibility to comply with health and safety standards is false and misleading.

Aluminum Shapes takes its obligation to provide a safe workplace for our workers very seriously. The company trains its employees to treat safety as their top priority, and has implemented safety protocols exceeding industry standards. This is supported by recent history: 2018 and 2019 were Aluminum Shapes’ safest years on record, and prior to these most recent citations, the company had been inspected by OSHA seven times over the course of nearly three years without OSHA finding any hazards or issuing any citations.

Further, in 2019, Aluminum Shapes had a total of 13 recordable injuries plant-wide, less than half the average of 28 recordable injuries at facilities sharing Aluminum Shapes’ service and product scope. Far from being out of step with the “safety and health standards” cited by Ms. Dixon-Roderick, Aluminum Shapes’ standards are outperforming those of its peers.

“OSHA’s statement was counter-productive and factually misleading,” said Solomon Rosenthal, Aluminum Shapes Chief Executive Officer. "Our commitment to the health and safety goes well beyond the OSHA requirements. In just the past two years, we instituted training regimens that outstrip OSHA's standard, added frequent mandatory safety-focused huddles, and began sponsoring healthy lifestyle initiatives. The results that we have obtained demonstrate that our methods are working. OSHA’s rhetoric notwithstanding, these citations—like the citations issued to the company in early 2017 and still under contest—were improperly issued. We intend to contest these citations, and look forward to obtaining rulings by the courts in all pending OSHA matters, which we expect will set the record straight on the claims made by Ms. Dixon-Roderick.”

ABOUT ALUMINUM SHAPES LLC.

A fully integrated company, Shapes offers the widest range of production and distribution capabilities in the industry including: Billet Casting, Remelt, Extrusion, Die Support, Fabrication, Finishings, Aluminum Anodizing, Engineering Design Support, Shipping and Distribution. From its 267,020 square meter, state-of-the-art facility, Shapes operates a highly efficient manufacturing and distribution operation with centralized administration, marketing, and customer service. Combined with our on-site engineering staff, technical support and quality assurance procedures, we can provide our customers with more rapid order fulfillment, higher quality, and better on time delivery performance. Backed by these capabilities and significant infrastructure investments over the last decade, Shapes has created one of the most comprehensive soft alloy aluminum extrusion facilities in North America.