Sugar plant removed safety device 13 days before temp worker was buried alive

[unhappycamper]

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/07/07/sugar-plant-removed-safety-device-13-days-before-temp-worker-was-buried-alive/



Sugar plant removed safety device 13 days before temp worker was buried alive
By Michael Grabell, ProPublica
Monday, July 7, 2014 14:55 EDT

Inside the sugar plant in Fairless Hills, Pa., nobody could find Janio Salinas, a 50-year-old temp worker from just over the New Jersey border.

Throughout the morning, Salinas and a handful of other workers had been bagging mounds of sugar for a company that supplies the makers of Snapple drinks and Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. But sugar clumps kept clogging the massive hopper, forcing the workers to climb inside with shovels to help the granules flow out the funnel-like hole at the bottom.

Coming back from lunch that day in February 2013, one employee said he had seen Salinas digging in the sugar. But when he looked back, Salinas was gone. All that remained was a shovel buried up to its handle. Then, peering through a small gap in the bottom of the hopper, someone noticed what appeared to be blue jeans.

It was Salinas. He had been buried alive in sugar.

[mountain grammy]

1. A minimum wage job, no doubt, and those pesky safety devices have to go.

The corporations need their profits, workers are expendable! Corporations are people, my friend. Sickening.

[WhiteTara]

2. k&r

[femmocrat]

3. Good lord. nt

I am ashamed that this happened in Pennsylvania.

[liberal N proud]

4. People forgot what the Unions provided workers

As they have broken they unions, they have whittled away at everything the unions did for workers both union and non-union.

Safety being one of the most important things that Unions fought for that can now be taken away because there is no one there speaking for the worker.

[aikoaiko]

5. Sadly, these types of deaths are regular in agriculture silos

http://apps.npr.org/buried-in-grain/

[gvstn]

6. It is the fine that is the "killer" in this story.

$25,000 reduced to $18,000 when the company had already been cited in the past for violations. No mention of any compensation to the victim's family.

The penalty has to be higher to have a deterrent effect. All temporary workers at the factory including the managers. No one trained in proper procedures. If OSHA doesn't have any powers to close businesses for workplace safety violations then who does? Maybe the FDA could randomly go in and sift through their sugar to see if it contains an "acceptable" level of human body parts to the volume of sugar tested?

[ProfessorGAC]

7. This Is Lilterally A Criminal Offense

A company cannot moved safeguards and use the system anyway, and then skate on the consequences from a legal view.
GAC

[TBF]

8. K&r nt

[raccoon]

9. Before I got to where the article said this happened in PA, I thought it was in Mexico or someplace.

Silly me! Like that doesn't happen in the US.

Recd.

[Omaha Steve]

10. Dear unhappycamper

Thank you for posting this!!!

OS