(Mirror Daily, United States) – Ashley Furniture Industries Inc., one of the top United States retailer and residential furniture manufacturer, will have to pay a $1.75 million fine to OSHA because of safety issues at plants in Wisconsin and Mississippi.

The agency stated that Ashley Furniture failed to assure the protection of its employees from moving machine parts. The safety procedures would have prevented machines from sudden start-up when operators cleared jams, cleaned machines, and changed blades.

Some 38 safety violations were detected at the Arcadia plant in February 2015, based on OSHA reports. Worse, the statistics showed that Ashley Furniture had over 1,000 work-related injuries over the last two years.

During such risky operations, workers were very exposed to many threats. Nevertheless, the company declared that the safety of their employees comes first, so they will double their efforts to improve their safety regulations.

The company invested over $67 million in safety initiatives and modern manufacturing equipment, all for the purpose of creating the safest working environment for everyone. Furthermore, Ashley Furniture spent over $250 million on investments and capital, has around 1,120 employees and its largest plant overall is the 3.8 million-square-foot facility in Advance.

In addition to this, 454 jobs will supply the facilities starting from October. As a total, the company has 30 facilities and 22,000 employees. Regarding safety issues, the company promised that its vice president will develop a program that will have the purpose of identifying and evaluating possible risks. Moreover, this program will prevent any future machine hazard that might occur.

According to Thomas Perez, U.S. Labor Secretary, all of these changes will consolidate the company’s work with OSHA, improve health and safety regulations of its employees, invest in their future and enrich its culture.

Furthermore, David Michael, assistant Labor secretary for OSHA, workers will have a better status in the company and a safer work environment. The future safety regulations will include internal monitoring provisions, an annual review of the effectiveness of the program and periodic facilities audits to detect machine hazards.

Plus, a senior manager or a corporate officer will have the task of being responsible for monitoring the activity. Hopefully, Ashley Furniture will become a safer company for its employees.

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