DuPont

Shareholders push DuPont on worker safety, not $130 billion merger

cmonforton — Fri, 29 Apr 2016 19:07:02 +0000

Shareholders push DuPont on worker safety, not $130 billion merger

There was an amazing scene this week at the annual meeting of DuPont shareholders. The reporting by Jeff Mordock of the The News-Journal made me feel like I was in the room witnessing it for myself.

Mordock writes:

“DuPont Co.'s safety record - not its upcoming $130 billion merger with The Dow Chemical Co. - was the focus of shareholder's ire at the company's annual meeting in New York City Wednesday. Not one shareholder asked DuPont CEO Ed Breen a question about the merger…Instead, shareholders grilled Breen about recent deaths at DuPont plants, including that of four workers killed at its LaPorte, Texas, facility in November 2014.”

The shareholders included Roy Reed an employee at that DuPont LaPorte plant. He held photos of Wade Baker, 60, Manuel Tisnado, 48, Robert Tisnado, 39, and Crystle Wise, 53 who were the victims of the company’s defective safety program. Reed is also president of Local 900 of the International Chemical Workers Union Council (ICWUC) in LaPorte, TX.

Ken Henley, an attorney representing the International Brotherhood of DuPont Workers (IBDW) also addressed the DuPont CEO and board of directors. Mordock reports what Henley told the Board about its distorted priorities:

"The [Board's] safety committee met a grand total of two times in 2015. In contrast, the [Board's] compensation program met 11 times.”

At least two shareholder groups had more than just talk planned for the meeting. The IBDW introduced a resolution to create an employee advisory position. The person's role would be bringing safety concerns directly to the DuPont board of directors. The United Steelworkers had a more modest proposal. They wanted the board to report back to shareholders at the next annual meeting on specific steps taken by the company to address safety hazards at its facilities. Both proposals were defeated.

John Morawetz with the ICWUC told Mordock why he was at the shareholders’ meeting. Mordock writes:

“... to represent those who couldn't be here,’ a reference to the four deceased. LaPorte workers. He said he was not surprised the proposals were defeated, but hoped the company would revisit the ideas at a later date.”

Roy Reed, John Morawetz, and the others representing DuPont workers were participating in company's shareholder meeting at the most opportune time. Across the globe and in cities throughout the U.S., workers, labor unions, health professionals, and safety advocates were commemorating Worker Memorial Day. More than a hundred events that took place this week in the US are listed here and at least another hundred are listed here. The DuPont shareholder's meeting was every bit a Worker Memorial Day event.

cmonforton Fri, 04/29/2016 - 15:07

Occupational Health News Roundup

kkrisberg — Tue, 25 Aug 2015 14:33:03 +0000

Occupational Health News Roundup

Reporter Anna Merlan at Jezebel chronicles the stories of women truck drivers who experienced severe sexual harassment and rape after enrolling in a training program. Her story begins with Tracy (who asked Merlan not to use her last name), who attended a driving school that contracts with Cedar Rapids Steel Transport Van Expedited (CRST), which is among the largest trucking companies in the country. During her training, Tracy was matched with a seasoned trucker who was supposed to help her safely accrue the training hours she needed before she could drive a truck on her own. Merlan reports:

The trainer started off by telling (Tracy) that one of the two fold-down bunk beds in the truck was broken.

“He told me the upper bed was broke and I’d have to sleep in his bed with him,” she says scornfully. “I declined that.” She ran across another woman who was training on another truck, who showed her how to get the bunk down.

“I got back on the truck, had it down, and made a bed,” she says. Her trainer got back on the truck, took a look, and said only that he “didn’t think that one worked.”

After that, she says, he started claiming that at truck stop showers along their route, management would only let them have one shower room at a time. “He said we’d have to shower together.” She declined that too.

“He hardly ever let me drive,” Tracy says. “I’d get bored and sit with my elbows on my knees and my chin resting on my hands. He’d smack me on the head and tell me I was in the way of his mirrors. He slapped my ass. He slapped me on the thigh. He told one of the people we were delivering to that we were late because I was his wife, I was pregnant and I was having morning sickness. They bring me Sprite and soda crackers and I’m looking at them like they’re crazy.”

For more than three weeks, Tracy kept telling herself she could handle his attentions.

Earlier this year, three women sued CRST, alleging they were sexually harassed, sexually assaulted or raped during their training. Merlan reports that it’s not unusual for women trainees in the trucking industry to experience retaliation for not agreeing to sexual favors. She interviewed trucker Desiree Wood, who founded Real Women in Trucking, a nonprofit that raises awareness about unsafe conditions for women in the industry. Wood told Merlan she originally began the nonprofit as a “protest group” — she felt that the industry-supported Women in Trucking Association, which works to recruit women into trucking, wasn’t being transparent about the risks they would face. Merlan reports:

The consequences for women who complain can be extremely high, Wood says, because there’s just one accusation a driver needs to make against her to derail her career. “‘She can’t drive.’ That’s all anybody needs to say about you as a woman. If you’re on a truck with a man and he’s naked and says, ‘You need to have sex with me or I’ll tell them you can’t drive,’ that’s real in trucking. Somebody saying you can’t drive is a death sentence.”

Tracy, the woman whose trainer she says slapped her until she bruised, thinks there has to be some better or more thorough screening mechanism before two people climb on a truck together, mentioning the time she learned that one co-driver had served time in prison for rape only after he got in a minor traffic accident while driving with her.

To read the full story, visit Jezebel.

In other news:

Houston Chronicle: The Pump Handle’s own Celeste Monforton, along with Jessica Martinez of the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health, authored an op-ed published last week calling out chemical giant DuPont, which despite its designation by OSHA as a “severe violator,” actually sells its workplace safety advice to other companies (yep, you read that correctly — the company makes millions as a safety consultant). The company’s “safety” program contradicts OSHA best practices, placing the onus for safety on the worker. Monforton and Martinez write: “In consultant-speak, this self-serving concept is called ‘behavioral safety.’ Whatever it's called, the concept is truly awful, suggesting that workplace illnesses, injuries and deaths result from errors made by rank-and-file workers. It does not consider the management's decisions to cut costs, disinvest in new equipment, forego maintenance and put production over safety.”

The Nation: Michelle Chen writes about last week’s court ruling that revived an Obama administration regulation bringing minimum wage and overtime protections to millions of home health care workers, who were originally excluded from the Fair Labor Standards Act. Chen writes that the ruling is good news for workers who often work long, grueling hours providing critical care to vulnerable patients. However she writes that more reform is needed in the industry: “The wage hike only goes so far. In fact, advocates point out that many states already cover these workers under state minimum wage and overtime laws, which often exceed the federal wage floor. Homecare workers are primarily encumbered by a lack of adequate provisions on the consumer side for comprehensive, high-quality services that both pay living wages and offer affordable services to families at all income levels.”

Texas Observer: Texas probably isn’t the first state that comes to mind when talking about living wages, but Maria Luisa Cesar reports that a number of Texas cities are leading the way on the issue. For example, she writes that officials in San Antonio are considering a measure that would impact hundreds of the city’s lowest-paid employees, raising pay to a wage of $13 an hour. Similar wage increases are on the horizon for Austin, Dallas and Houston. However, Cesar points out that Texas state law bars municipalities from raising wages for private-sector workers above the federal minimum wage of $7.25, meaning current wage increases would only affect public employees. She quoted Jerry Gonzalez, a retired worker in San Antonio who had attended a city council meeting to support a wage increase: “I’m fighting for the single parents, for the young couple that is just too busy trying to make ends meet.”

Salon: Robert Reich, former U.S. secretary of labor, writes about workers employed in the on-demand or sharing economy (think: Uber drivers) — a sector Reich refers to as the “irregular” economy for its propensity to result in unpredictable hours and income. With estimates that more than 40 percent of the American labor force will soon face “uncertain” work, Reich writes that while the new on-demand economy allows business to be more responsive to consumer demand, it shifts much of the risk onto workers. Indeed, the new and increasing employment arrangement is leading to all kinds of questions about who’s considered an employer and who’s considered an employee, with many such issues ending up in court. Reich’s solution: “We should aim instead for simplicity: Whatever party – contractor, client, customer, agent, or intermediary – pays more than half of someone’s income, or provides more than half their working hours, should be responsible for all the labor protections and insurance an employee is entitled to.”

Kim Krisberg is a freelance public health writer living in Austin, Texas, and has been writing about public health for more than a decade.

kkrisberg Tue, 08/25/2015 - 10:33

33 hours, 3 Toxic Releases, 1 Fatality: All preventable, says Chemical Safety Board of January 2010 incidents at DuPont Belle, West Virginia plant

lborkowski — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 07:58:12 +0000

33 hours, 3 Toxic Releases, 1 Fatality: All preventable, says Chemical Safety Board of January 2010 incidents at DuPont Belle, West Virginia plant

On the afternoon of Saturday, January 23, 2010, Carl "Danny" Fish, a 32-year employee of the DuPont plant in Belle, West Virginia was performing a routine operation when a hose carrying phosgene (a chemical so toxic it was used as a weapon during World War I) ruptured, spraying him in the face and chest. Fish was rushed to the hospital. He died the night of January 24. Two workers who attended to Mr. Fish were also exposed to phosgene but apparently without any lasting impact.

What initially sounded like a freak accident turns out to have been but one in a series of equipment failures that, according to the U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) draft investigation report released July 7th, resulted from a combination of poor maintenance, inadequate provisions for handling toxic materials, and faulty alarm and hazard alert systems. The fatal phosgene release was the third accidental release of a highly toxic substance to occur at the Belle DuPont plant within the space of 33 hours. It happened while the plant was on a "safety pause" following a "near miss" event involving a frayed phosgene hose of the same kind that broke just hours later, spraying the chemical that killed Danny Fish. Documents included in the CSB report show that DuPont had considered but rejected as too costly measures that could have prevented this incident.

These hoses - made from a material subject to corrosion - were supposed to be changed monthly, but the one that broke had not been replaced in seven months. Poor inspection procedures, inadequate alarm systems, and faulty safeguards allowed leaks of hazardous chemicals to develop and persist unnoticed. Communication about the accident and hazards involved was inadequate and left potentially significant gaps in what plant employees, emergency responders, and the surrounding community needed to know to be as safe as possible from potential toxic chemical exposures.

33 hours - three toxic releases
Phosgene wasn't the only chemical released by the Belle DuPont plant on January 22nd and 23rd, 2010. Methyl chloride - a potent cardiovascular, liver, and neuro-toxin - and oleum, (a highly corrosive form of sulfuric acid; the oleum released had an acid content 20 percent greater than sulfuric acid), also leaked from improperly maintained equipment on the following timeline:

Friday, January 22, 2010: A leak of methyl chloride that had apparently gone undetected for five days was discovered at the Belle plant. By the time it was stopped, approximately 2,000 pounds of the chemical had been released into the atmosphere.
Morning of Saturday, January 23: DuPont workers reported a "fuming cloud" above a chemical delivery pipe. About one-half hour later, valves were closed to stop a leak of oleum, some 22 pounds of which had escaped through a hole in a corroded pipe.
Afternoon of Saturday, January 23: A phosgene transfer hose broke and sprayed Danny Fish with enough of the chemical to cause his death.

What stands out from the CSB report is that all of the investigated incidents were entirely preventable and that DuPont had failed to take corrective action when hazardous conditions that eventually led to these toxic chemical releases were identified. Each "incident was preceded by an event or multiple events that triggered internal incident investigations by DuPont, which investigated all of these precursor events and issued recommendations and corrective actions," writes the CSB. "Despite investigating these preceding events the recommendations and corrective actions did not prevent the occurrence of similar events."

In the year following the three incidents under investigation, the CSB recounts that the Belle plant had another methyl chloride release in September 2010 during which more than 160,000 pounds of methanol were estimated to have been released into the nearby Kanawha River in the space of 24 hours. Then in December 2010, two workers received first-degree chemical burns to their faces while taking samples of monomethylamine during what should have been a routine operation. Both the September and December incidents at the Belle plant occurred after an EPA inspection prompted by the January incident resulted in the EPA ordering DuPont to undertake a safety review, and issuing a statement in March 2010 saying the facility failed to comply with Clean Air Act requirements designed to prevent accidental releases of hazardous chemicals.

(The Belle plant was not the only Dupont with safety problems in 2010. In November 2010 an explosion in a polyvinyl fluoride tank at the DuPont plant in Tonawanda, NY (near Buffalo) killed a worker who'd been hired to clean the tank and injured one of his colleagues.)

Underscoring the gravity of its assessment is the CSB characterization of DuPont as a company that had been considered an industry leader in health and safety. "According to company documents, the plant had the best safety record of any DuPont production facility prior to the incidents of January 22 and 23," writes the CSB. "We were surprised and alarmed" to learn of these incidents, said CSB Chair Rafael Moure-Eraso during a July 7 press conference.

Deciding against investments in safety
But none of these incidents should have surprised DuPont, according to information detailed by the CSB. The CSB report chronicles decisions made by DuPont in its choices of equipment and safety measures for toxic materials handling at the Belle plant, particularly for phosgene, that rendered plant operations more hazardous - more hazardous than those of at least one other DuPont plant. But there had been issues with other chemical delivery systems at the plant. A similar oleum leak had occurred at the plant in 2009, and alarm systems for that chemical process and for methyl chloride releases were chronically faulty.

In 1988, according to documents in the CSB report, DuPont had considered an enclosure and scrubbers for its phosgene storage but decided against these measures after a cost-benefit analysis. DuPont had also rejected using a stronger hosing material, less vulnerable to chemical degradation and had failed to thoroughly inspect existing hoses for what turns out to have been chronic corrosion. (These hoses were fraying underneath a plastic tag, and although the material was not ideal, changing hoses monthly as schedule required would have helped avert the breaks.)

"It may be that in the present circumstances the business can afford $2 MM for an enclosure however, in the long run can we afford to take such action which has such a small impact on safety and yet sets a precedent for all highly toxic material activites [sic]," says a 1988 DuPont memo (included in the CSB report) discussing the pros and cons of enclosing its Belle phosgene shed. However, DuPont's phosgene operation in Mobile, Alabama is enclosed, which prompts the question: Why weren't comparable safeguards established in West Virginia?

At Belle, workers entering the phosgene shed for duties like those Danny Fish performed were not required to wear respiratory protection or chemical-resistant coveralls. In 2004 a DuPont process hazard analysis at Belle, undertaken by the company after previous phosgene release incident, prompted a recommendation to enclose the phosgene shed. The deadline for enclosing the shed was extended four times and remained unfulfilled at the time of the fatal accident in 2010. "The shed contains no mechanical ventilation or exhaust systems to control phosgene leaks, only natural ventilation flowing through the shed wall opening from the atmosphere," writes the CSB.

The CSB investigation also highlights the fact that the Belle DuPont plant does not maintain the same safety measures for handling phosgene as recommended by the National Fire Protection Association. It also notes that OSHA's current standards for phosgene handling and storage are 1965 standards. According to the CSB report, in a safety audit of the plant conducted in 2009, OSHA did not address consequences of failures in preventative maintenance of phosgene hoses or hose problems due to corrosion or thermal expansion of the gas - both of which occurred in the hoses that broke.

Updating OSHA standards for phosgene handling, improving safety for phosgene operations at the Belle plant, and upgrading alarm systems for other toxic materials systems, including methyl chloride and oleum, are among the CSB report recommendations. But other changes in operations may render some of these recommendations moot.

As a result of an unrelated earlier EPA inspection, in 2009 EPA ordered the Belle DuPont plant to upgrade emissions monitoring and abatement in the unit where the oleum was released. As part of a consent decree issued by the EPA, that unit of the plant, owned by Lucite International but run by DuPont employees, was shut down in March 2010. Earlier this year, DuPont idled the unit where phosgene was used as a process chemical for pesticides, according to the company, due to changes in market conditions.

Methyl chloride, oleum, and phosgene have all been used at the Belle plant as chemical intermediates in the manufacture of agricultural chemicals, polymers, and other chemical products. While existing safety measures for handling such toxics are improved, the most fundamental question would seem to be: Can companies like DuPont continue to produce plastics, pesticides, and other needed synthetics but do so without relying on dangerous chemicals that pose such hazards to workers and communities where these plants are located?

Elizabeth Grossman is the author of Chasing Molecules: Poisonous Products, Human Health, and the Promise of Green Chemistry, High Tech Trash: Digital Devices, Hidden Toxics, and Human Health, and other books. Her work has appeared in a variety of publications including Scientific American, Salon, The Washington Post, The Nation, Mother Jones, Grist, and the Huffington Post. Chasing Molecules was chosen by Booklist as one of the Top 10 Science & Technology Books of 2009 and won a 2010 Gold Nautilus Award for investigative journalism.

lborkowski Wed, 07/13/2011 - 03:58