Frank Boosman writes about the recent New York Times/Frontline/CBC series on the dangerous Tyler Pipe and McWane plants. One of the NYT stories is At a Texas Foundry, an Indifference to Life. It's much more grisly than the discussion I heard on Talk of the Nation with one of the reporters and the head of OSHA. The kind of thing you got in the appropriate part of Fast Food Nation.
Less downtime that way, the men said. Now it was about 4 a.m., and Mr. Hoskin was alone in the cramped, dark pit. The din was deafening, the footing treacherous under heavy drifts of black sand.
He was found on his knees. His left arm had been crushed first, the skin torn off. His head had been pulled between belt and rollers.
Remember the danger of focusing on one metric Joel Spolsky writes about?
Throughout the plant, in supervisors' offices and on bulletin boards, next to production charts and union memos, is posted in big orange letters: REDUCE MAN HOURS PER TON.
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This is really sad. I grew up in Tyler, and I don’t care much for it. But this kind of thing never went on there.
I don’t know when this broke, but I was in Tyler until 1/6 and no one there even mentioned it. I’m curious to see what sort of play it gets in their local media.
— twf