Trained in English Only: What a Crushed Hand Says About Instructions Workers Can't Read

In May 2024 a night-shift cleaner at a Victorian meat processing plant reached into the lower chute of a meat grinder to clear leftover product. A colleague, unaware of where his hand was, activated the JOG function. The feeding worm turned one full rotation and crushed his right hand. He needed two surgeries. Many of the cleaning crew spoke Karen or Burmese as their first language with limited English. Training and procedures were in English only. Eco Facility Services pleaded guilty to failing to provide information, instruction and training in a culturally and linguistically appropriate way. It was fined $30,000 without conviction.

The detail that stayed with me is the court's finding that serious injury was foreseeable despite the company's otherwise extensive OHS systems. The systems were there. They just were not reaching the people who needed them.

Provided Is Not the Same as Understood

Most of us measure training by what we can prove we delivered. A signed attendance sheet. A completed induction module. A procedure filed in the right folder. None of those tell you whether the worker understood a word of it. For a worker with limited English, a perfectly written English procedure is not a control at all.

Ask yourself about your own workforce:

• Do you know the first languages spoken by the people on each shift, including contractors and labour hire?
• Are your critical procedures, like isolation before clearing a blockage, available in those languages or in pictures?
• How do you check understanding after training rather than just attendance?
• Would a worker who did not understand feel safe enough to say so?

The Isolation Question Underneath

There is a second control question inside this case. A worker had his hand in a machine while another worker could start it. Clearing a blockage is one of the most common moments for this to happen. It is also exactly the moment that a lockout procedure is meant to cover. If the crew could not read the lockout procedure, it is fair to ask whether they ever knew it existed.

That is how language and isolation connect. The critical control may be well designed. If the people doing the task cannot understand it, the control fails at the point of use.

A Rule Written for the Wrong Task

This week's brief carried a second Victorian case with a similar shape. In June 2024 a 19-year-old heavy diesel apprentice was oxy-acetylene cutting a steel beam at SuniTAFE's Mildura campus when his cotton shirt caught fire. Leather welding jackets were available. The rule required them only for arc welding, not oxy cutting. SuniTAFE was fined $20,000 without conviction and has since made the jackets compulsory for oxy-acetylene cutting.

In both cases the organisation had a system. In one the system was written in a language the workers could not read. In the other the rule was attached to the name of a process instead of the hazard the task created. Both are versions of the same gap between what is written and what reaches the person at risk.

• Are your PPE and procedure rules tied to the hazard or to the name of the job?
• When a task changes, does anyone check whether the existing rule still covers it?
• Who in your business is responsible for making sure instructions are understood, not just issued?

One Thing to Do This Week

Pick one critical procedure, like clearing a jam or isolating a machine. Ask three workers from different backgrounds to explain it back to you in their own words. If any of them cannot, you have found where your system stops working. Translated versions, pictorial steps and an interpreter at induction are all simple fixes.

If every worker on your night shift was asked how to stop the machine before reaching in, how many could answer in a language you would understand?