It’s Dec. 14. The string of terrifying and deadly tornadoes bore a path through Arkansas to Kentucky overnight on Friday Dec. 10. Totally destroyed was a Mayfield, KY (pop. 9,729) factory that made scented candles, a family-owned Mayfield Consumer Products company.
In the immediate aftermath of the tornado, media coverage reported that approximately 110 employees were working that night. The earliest news was that 40 got out. Fears grew that the remainder had perished in the collapsed structure. However, the final toll was eight (8) souls died. Relief was palpable.
But on Monday Dec. 13 NBC News broke the story that should shock every U.S. worker.
There were actually two rounds of warning sirens. The first one wailed at 5:30 pm, hours before the tornado that wiped out Mayfield would touch down there. It actually provided hours to empty the factory. The National Weather Service in nearby Paducah issued a warning at 11:30 am Friday to be ready.
The candle factory supposedly was working round the clock to meet seasonal demand. It would seem reasonable that management would send all workers home to be with families and possibly evacuate far from the path of the oncoming tornado. Reasonable, but not in America.
NBC interviewed factory survivors who told of asking permission to go home after that first warning siren. Supervisors and managers replied with the threat that “if you leave, you will most likely be fired.” When asked directly by one group of five workers if they would be fired if they left to get to safety, one manager is quoted as saying, “Yes.”
Team leaders (non-supervisory workers given the great-sounding title but with little authority or extra pay for the role) backed supervisors. One such team leader denied to NBC the very clear threat reported by several workers.
Bolstering evidence that the threat was to stay and risk death or leave and lose your job was the fact that managers took roll call to comprise a list of those who fled for their lives.
When the second warning siren rang out, those in the factory had only minutes before the structure came down on them. They had been ushered into hallways that offered no protection. The facility, built where tornadoes must occur with enough frequency to warrant having community warning sirens, had no tornado safety shelter.
Here then is one of the purest examples of how employers boast of their commitment to their “cherished employees” (no kidding, this is the term used on the factory’s website) while practicing the cruelest disregard for the lives of those employees.
As an afterthought, how must managers, supervisors and lead workers feel acting on behalf of the company in ways that defeated the workers’ desire to LIVE? Shame on them.
And will the surviving workers ever again wait to ASK if they be allowed to save their own lives to be with their families when disaster is pending and did actually strike? I hope not.
NO PAYCHECK IS WORTH GIVING UP YOUR LIFE!!!!
As for the owners, I wish them lawsuits for their reckless indifference to the lives of their workers. How’s that small town, family feeling holding up now that you proved as the region’s largest employer to be so dangerous. But it’s Kentucky, an anti-worker, anti-union state. Let’s see what comes next.
