Temporary employment agency worker Amina Diaby was on the job just two weeks when she died in a North York bakery. Her head scarf got sucked into a machine and strangled her — an industrial accident to which there were apparently no witnesses.

That is what a provincial offences court heard last September when Fiera Foods pleaded guilty for failing to ensure that 23-year-old Diaby’s loose clothing was secured around machinery. The company, which was the subject of a Star undercover investigation last year, was fined $300,000 for the offence.

But documents recently obtained by the Star show there was an employee working with Diaby at the time of her death. According to the documents, he did not know how to help her when she became entrapped, and he did not understand how to use the machine’s emergency stop buttons.

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In a 2017 investigation initiated after Diaby’s death, Jennifer Strachan, an investigator for the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board, said neither the co-worker, a forklift driver nor a “team lead” who trained Diaby on her first day “pushed either of the two emergency safety stop buttons that were present at that time.”

“It was not until the supervisor and mechanic came on scene that the safety stop button was pushed,” her investigation notes say.

In the documents obtained under freedom of information laws, Strachan said a “review of the training documents provided do not support that either Amina Diaby or her co-worker … had received training in the location and use of the emergency safety buttons.”

The investigation also found the machine’s guarding was “not adequate in ensuring that material did not get drawn in and entrapped.” The equipment was more than 18 years old, according to the findings.

After Diaby died, it is unclear what happened to the co-worker who witnessed the accident. His name was redacted from the documents released to the Star.

In response to questions about the WSIB investigation, Fiera Foods general counsel David Gelbloom said the company had “implemented workplace improvements to our manufacturing shop floor for temporary, part-time and full-time workers.” The measures, he said, included hiring two new health and safety trainers, conducting more regular audits on its facilities and a confidential, third-party whistleblower hotline for workers to raise questions or voice concerns.

“Fiera Foods remains deeply committed to offering opportunities to Canadians from diverse backgrounds and experience. In the past few months, we have offered full-time employment to (and on-boarded) over 90 people,” Gelbloom said.

“Our founders grew up working on the shop floor and remain committed to providing the safest possible workspace for every one of our full-time and temporary workers.”

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Diaby came to Canada as a refugee, fleeing a forced marriage in Guinea. She got a job at Fiera through a temp agency hoping to save money for nursing school.

Following her death in September 2016, Fiera Foods installed a third emergency stop button on the line where she’d worked, according to the WSIB’s investigation notes from April 11, 2017. When the investigator approached another employee working there, Strachan found he “did not understand English very well” and was able to identify only one of the three buttons.

“I had to gesture to the buttons and ask repeatedly about the buttons for him to understand I was asking about the emergency stop buttons,” her report says.

“He indicated through shrugs of his shoulders that he did not know what the other two buttons did.”

Last year, a Star reporter went undercover as a low-wage temp worker at Fiera Foods, which relies heavily on temps as it mass-produces bread products for major grocery stores and fast-food chains. The reporter received just five minutes of safety training and was paid in cash at a payday lender, without pay stubs or statutory deductions. The reporter was shown a picture of an emergency stop button but was not provided with any hands-on instruction.

Data obtained by the Star as part of its investigation showed that temp agency workers in Ontario are increasingly being placed in non-clerical environments like factories and warehouses, and that they are twice as likely to get hurt in these sectors as their non-temp counterparts.

Research by the Toronto-based Institute for Work and Health found that employers often shift risky work onto temps because they were not responsible for their injuries at the workers’ compensation board. Last month, the Ontario government vowed to enact legislation to hold both employers and temp agencies responsible when a temp gets hurt on the job.

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Temp agency workers are often untrained. In the U.S., where more research has been done on temp work, David Michaels, a former director of the Occupational Health and Safety Administration, noted in 2014 that “most employers don’t treat temporary workers the way they treat their permanent employees — they don’t provide them with the training that is necessary.”

Fiera Foods and its sister company Marmora Freezing Corp. have pleaded guilty to charges under Ontario’s occupational health and safety laws following the deaths of two other temp agency workers.

In 1999, a 17-year old temp named Ivan Golyashov was killed at Fiera’s Norelco Dr. plant when a dough mixer was activated while he was inside cleaning it. In 2011, 69-year-old Aydin Kazimov was crushed by a transport truck outside Marmora Freezing Corp. Fiera Foods and Marmora were convicted in each case under the Occupational Health and Safety Act and fined $150,000 on each occasion.

In the months after Diaby’s death, Fiera approached the WSIB about participating in a voluntary program called Workwell that helps companies improve workplace safety, according to documents obtained by the Star through its freedom of information request.

“The owner is very motivated to have the safest environment possible,” says a December 2016 email from Matt Wilson, the board’s director of Workplace Health and Safety Services, to a Workwell manager. The program subsequently assigned “one of (its) best” evaluators to work with Fiera.

In February 2017, Workwell expert John Carr emailed Wilson to describe an “awkward” first meeting with the company, where an office meeting he attended “seemed like family party time with guests laughing and hugging.”

“I would question if they are sincerely interested in becoming an industry leader in Health and Safety, as they said, or whether this is a case of improving the optics,” Carr wrote.

“They did not offer much insight into their operation but rather just wanted to know about the Workwell process and how it would work, how long it would take and what the cost would be.”

Carr described the front of the factory as being obstructed by long-term sewer construction. “There did not appear to be any effort made to assist employees getting to and from work through the construction zone,” he said.

“When I arrived at the office it seemed like family party time with guests laughing and hugging, and then during the meeting, some guy came into the conference room without knocking to give the president a hug and a kiss,” he added. “It was awkward.”

The Workwell program was ultimately suspended because of Strachan’s investigation into Diaby’s death and Fiera has yet to complete the program, according to a WSIB spokesperson, Christine Arnott.

“We suggested that Fiera contact us after the investigation to continue the Workwell process, and that invitation stands. Our door is always open to any Ontario business looking to improve health and safety in their workplace,” Arnott said.

Walmart, Costco, Metro and Dunkin’ Donuts all told the Star they continue to sell products made by Fiera Foods. (Tim Hortons, Loblaw and Sobeys, who have also sold Fiera products in the past, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.)

A spokesperson for Metro wrote in an email to the Star that representatives of the grocery chain have had “regular and multiple contacts” with Fiera Foods regarding the issues highlighted by the Star’s ongoing investigation. “We take this situation very seriously, as you may guess. They are keeping us informed on what they have put in place and what they are working on to address the situation,” wrote Geneviève Grégoire, who declined to elaborate on what specifically Fiera has told them.

A Walmart spokesperson, Anika Malik, said in an emailed statement that Walmart “care(s) about the men and women in the supply chain” and that Fiera Foods has shared with Walmart “the controls they’ve put in place to address these concerns.” Malik would not elaborate on what specifically Fiera Foods has done.

As a result of Fiera’s guilty plea in September, the Crown withdrew charges against Diaby’s supervisor at the factory, as well as charges related to two separate incidents that occurred at Fiera Foods in October 2015 and June 2016, when the court heard workers suffered “critical” arm injuries.

smojtehedzadeh@thestar.ca, 416-869-4195

bkennedy@thestar.ca, 416-869-4192

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