Risking your life for $9.00 an hour

[Dante]

Put a face to the man who MAGA belittles trying to make it about Biden in order to deflect from what conservatives and MAGA against OSHA and the Labor Dept want to do -- make this more likely to happen in more places.

"Kill OSHA" "Slay the Labor Dept!"


View attachment 1079559

James Streetman, a 67-year-old maintenance worker, was killed in an accident at the Alabama lumber mill

This man lost his life. Why? Profits over safety.

The workplace accident he was involved in was preventable. Like Trump and MAGA, the owners believed they could ignore the law, the rules, and laugh at everybody.

 

[Leo123]

There are lots of places like this in America, meatpacking plants especially, staffed primarily by migrants doing all the dirty work, where you risk your fingers or other injuries daily, but apparently this place is the worst for injuries. I don't know if that is true, they are a small plant, there are bigger ones in the heartland with over a thousand workers where injuries are common but easier to hide amongst a larger workforce. Being a union shop means employers will take safety far more seriously than a non-union shop, mainly because of their responsibility in the event someone is hurt.

With Trump in charge now, Federal regulators will be called off. It's open season for employers.



The police lieutenant sounded unnerved as he stepped inside the old lumber mill. The power was off. The giant saws were quiet. But the smell of fresh sawdust still hung in the humid summer air. In the darkened factory, sunlight streamed through jagged holes in the rusted metal walls as Lt. Marc Cutt walked across a machine that turned logs into lumber.

“Has it been rendered safe?” Cutt asked another police officer as his body camera recorded the scene.

“Safe is a relative term in this place,” the officer responded.

The police knew this place well. So did federal safety inspectors.

At Phenix Lumber Co., workers had lost fingers, broken bones and been mangled by machines — at least 28 employees had reported injuries since 2010, at a company with only about 50 people on the payroll at a time. Three had died. A medical examiner’s report detailed how just 23 pounds of one employee was recovered after he was caught in a machine. It had reached the point, some former workers said, that they would pray before the start of their $9-an-hour shifts.

Phenix Lumber was the deadliest workplace in America over the past five years. No other office or factory posted a higher rate of work-related fatal incidents per worker, according to a Washington Post analysis of Occupational Safety and Health Administration fatality reports since 2019. The analysis examined deaths by workplace location, rather than by company, using OSHA data on fatalities investigated by the agency, which generally does not cover small farms or federal workers.

OSHA is tasked with ensuring that American work environments are safe. “There’s no way to characterize the history at this workplace as acceptable,” the agency said in a statement.

The story of Phenix Lumber — drawn from thousands of previously undisclosed documents and recordings obtained by The Post, along with interviews with officials and former workers and managers — shows the limits of OSHA’s powers. It cannot shut down companies even after years of repeated violations and penalties, even when workers die. It even lacks the power to ask a judge to do so.

It can request a shutdown from the court only in rare cases of “imminent danger,” such as a looming roof collapse. Causing the death of a worker by willfully violating safety rules is a misdemeanor under federal law. The maximum sentence is six months in prison, less than the penalty for killing an endangered animal. In the past five years, OSHA sent fewer than 50 cases to the Justice Department for a criminal review, records show, and it’s unclear how many of those were prosecuted.

The agency tried “to use all of the resources we have, all the tools we have” in its pursuit of the lumber mill, said Jim Frederick, who was the No. 2 official at OSHA and a deputy assistant secretary at the Labor Department until January.

Since at least 2003, federal safety inspectors have fined the company nearly $5.3 million. They issued more than 180 citations for health and safety violations, accusing the company of knowingly ignoring workers’ safety “for monetary gain.” A quarter of the violations were deemed “willful,” the most severe category. Phenix Lumber workers told inspectors that they were routinely instructed to put their hands into the jaws of stuck machines to clear jams — without first cutting the power, a clear hazard. And the machines were in such bad shape that they regularly broke down.

OSHA twice forced the company into a program for what regulators deemed “the worst of the worst employers.”

“This must stop,” they repeatedly warned the mill’s owners — one of the wealthiest families in eastern Alabama.

But nothing ever seemed to stop Phenix Lumber. It kept churning out millions of board feet of southern yellow pine for the construction industry from its sawdust-covered valley on the edge of town.

Now, in August 2023, the two police officers reached a red tarp covering a doorway, according to body-cam footage. One of them pulled the tarp aside and pointed. Just below a small balcony stood an auger — a giant metal corkscrew set in an open-faced chute to move wood chips. An hour earlier, James Streetman, a 67-year-old maintenance supervisor, had fallen in while the auger was spinning. Or the auger had unexpectedly kicked on as he stepped across it. No one yet knew. Streetman’s spine was shredded, liver ejected, heart never found, according to an autopsy.

WaPo

WaPo has lost it's relevance and credibility after lying all thes years of Marxist garbage they spew.

 

[White 6]

The company dictates if one wants to keep a job.

Don't get me wrong, the company still is to blame for its anti-safety culture operation.

Building a safety culture is hard, and has to be a constant, akin to quality control. You either work it daily or you don't have it.

 

[Leo123]

Don't get me wrong, the company still is to blame for its anti-safety culture operation.

Building a safety culture is hard, and has to be a constant, akin to quality control. You either work it daily or you don't have it.

OSHA is a joke. I was an OSHA rep many decades ago. I resigned because they wanted to put kick plates in front of machines that the workers actually tripped over that thrust them into sanding machines. You just can't protect everyone against everything.

 

[Leo123]

This man lost his life. Why? Profits over safety.

View attachment 1079561

The workplace accident he was involved in was preventable. Like Trump and MAGA, the owners believed they could ignore the law, the rules, and laugh at everybody.

What kind of accident?

 

[EvilCat Breath]

go away Trollboi

Make me. Oh helpless one. Stop lying.

 

[White 6]

OSHA is a joke. I was an OSHA rep many decades ago. I resigned because they wanted to put kick plates in front of machines that the workers actually tripped over that thrust them into sanding machines. You just can't protect everyone against everything.

Sounds like you quit OSHA over a design issue.

I had no problem with OSHA, or TOSHA (Tennessee Occupational Safety and Health), while working supv/mgt coordinating safety in a wholesale door, window & millwork operation. We had the culture to support proper safety and high speed production. We tolerated very few safety shortcuts, as shortcuts are generally unsafe. I was school trained, going back to military in safety and accident investigation. Due to our efforts and the culture, we had very few loss time accidents, and the only loss of life accidents were among our fleet drivers.

 

[Leo123]

Sounds like you quit OSHA over a design issue.

I had no problem with OSHA, or TOSHA (Tennessee Occupational Safety and Health), while working supv/mgt coordinating safety in a wholesale door, window & millwork operation. We had the culture to support proper safety and high speed production. We tolerated very few safety shortcuts, as shortcuts are generally unsafe. I was school trained, going back to military in safety and accident investigation. Due to our efforts and the culture, we had very few loss time accidents, and the only loss of life accidents were among our fleet drivers.

All OSHA did was make it harder for the worker to do his job along with making it more unsafe completely the opposite of what they’re supposed to do.

 

[DGS49]

If their workers are illegals, that can be dealt with.

OSHA is a Federal government organ. Surely the State has a counterpart agency, also "responsible" for monitoring safety in its workplaces.

How does the safety record compare with other similar businesses? Although I have only done real work a few times in my life, I saw things that I considered unsafe on all of them, OSHA be damned. OTOH, I saw OSHA complaints result in quick and decisive changes in the workplace.

Consider also that every employer must obtain Workmens' Compensation insurance for its workers, and the worse the safety record is, the higher the premiums. If this company is as bad as claimed, how are they dealing with the WC issues?

 

[JGalt]

Put a face to the man who MAGA belittles trying to make it about Biden in order to deflect from what conservatives and MAGA against OSHA and the Labor Dept want to do -- make this more likely to happen in more places.

"Kill OSHA" "Slay the Labor Dept!"


View attachment 1079559

James Streetman, a 67-year-old maintenance worker, was killed in an accident at the Alabama lumber mill

You neglected to mention the fact that the accident happened in 2023, during the Biden/Harris presidency.

Biden's OSHA Director was an assistant health and safety director at the United Steelworkers union, while Trump's held senior positions overseeing health and safety at UPS and Amazon.
What makes you think OSHA will operate any different under Trump?

 

[The Irish Ram]

Hey, what about OSHA and the Labor Department. Do they still exist under Trump/Musk

They do if they aren't crooked...

 

[Leo123]

You neglected to mention the fact that the accident happened in 2023, during the Biden/Harris presidency.

Biden's OSHA Director was an assistant health and safety director at the United Steelworkers union, while Trump's held senior positions overseeing health and safety at UPS and Amazon.
What makes you think OSHA will operate any different under Trump?

What in the heck was a 67 year old guy doing climbing to the top of a huge auger in the first place? You can't stop people from doing stupid things.

I used to work in a huge machine shop and, for a time, ran a 35 ton punch press. It had 2 air actuators that took both hands to trip the ram. Guys would hold one with their foot and press the other with their hand so they could load the die faster. That resulted in chopped hands and fingers. Then they installed straps hooked to the flywheel and the operator's wrists in order to pull their hands away when the ram was actuated. They were cumbersome and slowed work paces down to a crawl so, many just would not use them. You can't cure stupid.

 

[odanny]

Who was in charge when all this carnage was taking place before Trump? Why didn't they fix it? Where was OSHA?
People have been known to drown at work, catch fire at work, lose limbs at work, go blind at work...
Work place danger is an occupational hazard under the best of conditions. And OSHA has been known to take bribes.

OSHA’s penalties have remained the same since 1990, except for inflation adjustments. Even today, the top penalty OSHA can hand out for a willful violation is about $165,000 — less than half the maximum daily fine for a Clean Water Act violation. “Fines are higher for killing fish than killing workers,” said former OSHA administrator David Michaels, who served under Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.

OSHA’s enforcement powers have changed little since its creation in 1971, lagging behind those of other regulators. For instance, the Mine Safety and Health Administration can shut down an operation to protect workers’ lives. Efforts to give OSHA that power — along with other tools — have regularly been defeated in Congress amid fierce complaints from industry officials and conservative politicians about the agency’s “overreach and skewed priorities.”

Just last year, Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill held a hearing to showcase complaints about OSHA. Business groups also pushed to have the Supreme Court hear a case aimed at curtailing the agency’s powers. The justices ultimately declined to take it up, but Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in a dissent that OSHA’s creation “may be the broadest delegation of power to an administrative agency found in the United States Code.”

 

[pknopp]

The Democrats, Republicans and Presidents could change this? How? The GOP controlled the Congress for so long. How could Biden or Democrats have stepped into this?

Conservatives and MAGA GOP hate OSHA! Hate safety regulations. It's to them "The Deep State"

read up on the history of OSHA -- who attacks OSHA for decades.


Murder of OSHA -- Killed under Trump/Musk

First the article notes how little the people are being paid. They could have raised the minimum wage.

In Alabama the only minimum wage law is the Federal $7.25

 

[initforme]

Why not just shut the place of business down? Easy call. Put the owners on trial. Makes sense. Another case of supporting some wealthy people. Sad.

 

[initforme]

If nobody applied for 9.00 per hour jobs then they'd go away. Win win for the nation.

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

Neither party is willing to upend the cheap labor gravy train.

Scrooge Money Talks, and That's All We Hear

Our government is totally controlled by incompetent businessmen who can't make a profit except through cheap and docile Third World labor. They hire Liberals to pretend it's all about multiculturalist social justice. Every Liberal policy is secretly designed to appease Rightist kleptocrats and their spoiled-putrid heirs.

 

[Lastamender]

I've risked my life for no financial reward.

It's how good guy, patriots roll.

Two more things you know nothing about.

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

OH DEAR!!!..HOW EVER DID THE NATION EVER GET ALONG WITHOUT MILLIONS Of WARSHTON BUREAUCRATS?!?!?

rube

Retarded Terriers

Why would the kleptocracy allow its government to hire intelligent and dedicated watchdogs?

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

OSHA is a joke. I was an OSHA rep many decades ago. I resigned because they wanted to put kick plates in front of machines that the workers actually tripped over that thrust them into sanding machines. You just can't protect everyone against everything.

Every Bird of Prey Has Two Wings

They overdo it on purpose. They were hired to make government supervision look petty, nonsensical, and overreaching.