When you hear people talk about inhumane working conditions in factories, you might think that they are speaking about a historical event, like the deplorable conditions and child labor that were common in factories during the Industrial Revolution. Alternatively, you might think that they are talking about foreign manufacturing plants, where workers are paid little and expected to produce much. Surely inhumane working conditions are a thing of the past in America – or are they? A look into some of the workplace accidents that occur in American factories reveals the dangers that are present in American manufacturing jobs and the sorry state of the American manufacturing workplace.
The growth of the auto parts industry in the American South provides an example of how foreign competition affects domestic workplace safety. American factories compete for low-margin orders against Asian and Mexican suppliers by promising delivery schedules that they cannot reasonably expect to meet. In efforts to avoid the enormous financial penalties that they will face if they fall short of those plans, manufacturers schedule their employees to work crazy schedules for months on end. The workers are not paid well, especially in light of the intense pressure to perform that they experience day in and day out, job satisfaction is low, and turnover rates are high. Perhaps even more importantly, safety is sacrificed at every turn, and the risk of injury and death is just as high in some of these American factories as it is in the Asian and Mexican plants that cause us to gasp in horror when we see them on the news.
The risk to American auto parts manufacturing workers is not evenly distributed across the country, either. Workers in the South get paid seventy cents per dollar earned by their counterparts in the Northern states where more of the manufacturing labor is organized. Labor unions are much less prevalent in the South, so workers there enjoy fewer of the safety and financial protections that organized labor can provide. OSHA is aware of the discrepancies in safety and fairness among manufacturing plants in various regions, and it is doing its best to address workplace safety violations in the South. Unfortunately, OSHA cannot move fast enough to prevent the frequent, serious and sometimes even fatal manufacturing accidents that occur in our region.
The accidents that occur in manufacturing facilities in the American South are tragic. Workers are being asked to continue working when they are very tired, which increases the risk of injury. They also keep assembly lines rolling, even when machinery shows signs that it is malfunctioning. For example, a man lost his finger while operating a punch that had been performing strangely all day. The punch got stuck, and then it fired suddenly, amputating his finger.
Employee training in many foreign-owned American auto parts manufacturing plants is severely lacking. For example, Ajin USA, the company that owns the facility where a young woman died after being impaled by and trapped in a robot on an assembly line, was charged with numerous OSHA violations both before and after the tragic incident. Some of those violations were connected with eight incidences of digit amputation by welding machines in that facility, indicating that unsafe conditions at that plant and others are allowed to persist even after accidents occur.
Barrett Law PLLC: Representing Injured Mississippi Workers
If you got hurt at work, get help from a Mississippi Workplace Accident Attorney. Call the Mississippi Workplace Accident Attorneys at Barrett Law PLLC at 1 (800) 707-9577 to learn more.
