by Phil Mattera
VP at Imperial Sugar admits that working conditions at the plant where an explosion took the lives of 13 workers earlier this year were terrible.
Savannah Fire and Emergency Services Captain Todd Heil during the search for survivors at the site of an Imperial Sugar Refinery explosion in Port Wentworth, Georgia that killed 13. Imperial Sugar Company has been fined $8.7 million for OSHA violations in their factories in Georgia and Louisiana. (Photo: Carl Elmore / Savannah Morning News)
"Shocking" and "disgraceful" are not the sort of words we expect to hear from a corporate executive when referring to his or her own company, but that's exactly what happened at a recent Senate hearing about the conditions at Imperial Sugar. Those descriptors made up part of the testimony of Graham H. Graham, vice president for operations at the company, which was recently hit with a proposed fine of $5 million by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration in connection with conditions that caused a dust explosion earlier this year at its Port Wentworth, Georgia plant that killed 13 workers. Another fine of $3.7 million was proposed by OSHA in connection with similar problems at the company's operation in Gramercy, Louisiana.
"It was without a doubt the dirtiest and most dangerous manufacturing plant I had ever come to," said Graham about the non-union Port Wentworth refinery, which he toured after being hired by Imperial Sugar late last year. He claimed to have pointed out more than 400 safety violations and was in the process of having them corrected when the accident occurred. CEO John Sheptor, who declined to testify at the hearing of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions, told the Associated Press that Graham has "exaggerated numerous things regularly about our facilities." Sheptor's p.r. people should have told him that line doesn't work when you have the blood of 13 workers on your hands.
http://www.truthout.org/article/the-shocking-and-disgraceful-imperial-sugar-tragedy
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