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How a deadly chicken processing plant fire reveals a decline in worker protections
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How a deadly chicken processing plant fire reveals a decline in worker protections
By Sam Quinones
September 1, 2017
Sam Quinones is the author of "Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic."
On Sept. 3, 1991, fire swept through the Imperial Food Products chicken-processing plant in the town of Hamlet, N.C. Workers scrambled to save themselves. But an exit was blocked to keep flies out of the plant. Sprinklers failed. The flames spread on the hydraulic fluid spraying from a loosened hose connected to the fryer and lapped up the chicken grease all over the plant floor. Twenty-five people died, most of them women, minimum-wage line workers.
The Hamlet fire was one of the worst industrial accidents in recent U.S. history. Years later, Temple University historian Bryant Simon went to the town, suspecting that behind the fire was a larger story.
[This is what life would actually be like without processed food]
The story he finds connects the fire to changes in America. Following the Depression and World War II, policymakers of both parties believed in the "broad benefits of decent wages and the need for taxes to pay for the safety net that hung beneath the economy," Simon writes, and that "the more people made and the more they had in the bank and in their homes . . . the better, it was believed, for everyone."
Years passed, though, and as a culture we turned away from that. We adopted instead a true belief in the infallible benefit of the free market, and grew unwilling to fund the government's ability to help workers and build community, while shaking our heads at the poor choices of people who lost out.
“The Hamlet Fire,” by Bryant Simon (The New Press /The New Press )
The now-forgotten Imperial Food and the fire, in Simon's view, were signs of that. They are powerful storytelling tools and Simon uses them well. ... The New South, and particularly North Carolina, headquartered the new paradigm. Policymakers there "pioneered a political economy that looked like the harbinger of the global phenomenon," and like their later counterparts in Bangladesh and Vietnam, they "let business leaders — who were feeling the heat of competitive pressures and shrinking profits in their current locations . . . know that they would keep taxes low and the government out of their affairs."
....
THE HAMLET FIRE
A Story of Cheap Food, Cheap Government, and Cheap Lives
By Bryant Simon
New Press.
303 pp. $26.95
How a deadly chicken processing plant fire reveals a decline in worker protections
By Sam Quinones
September 1, 2017
Sam Quinones is the author of "Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic."
On Sept. 3, 1991, fire swept through the Imperial Food Products chicken-processing plant in the town of Hamlet, N.C. Workers scrambled to save themselves. But an exit was blocked to keep flies out of the plant. Sprinklers failed. The flames spread on the hydraulic fluid spraying from a loosened hose connected to the fryer and lapped up the chicken grease all over the plant floor. Twenty-five people died, most of them women, minimum-wage line workers.
The Hamlet fire was one of the worst industrial accidents in recent U.S. history. Years later, Temple University historian Bryant Simon went to the town, suspecting that behind the fire was a larger story.
[This is what life would actually be like without processed food]
The story he finds connects the fire to changes in America. Following the Depression and World War II, policymakers of both parties believed in the "broad benefits of decent wages and the need for taxes to pay for the safety net that hung beneath the economy," Simon writes, and that "the more people made and the more they had in the bank and in their homes . . . the better, it was believed, for everyone."
Years passed, though, and as a culture we turned away from that. We adopted instead a true belief in the infallible benefit of the free market, and grew unwilling to fund the government's ability to help workers and build community, while shaking our heads at the poor choices of people who lost out.
“The Hamlet Fire,” by Bryant Simon (The New Press /The New Press )
The now-forgotten Imperial Food and the fire, in Simon's view, were signs of that. They are powerful storytelling tools and Simon uses them well. ... The New South, and particularly North Carolina, headquartered the new paradigm. Policymakers there "pioneered a political economy that looked like the harbinger of the global phenomenon," and like their later counterparts in Bangladesh and Vietnam, they "let business leaders — who were feeling the heat of competitive pressures and shrinking profits in their current locations . . . know that they would keep taxes low and the government out of their affairs."
....
THE HAMLET FIRE
A Story of Cheap Food, Cheap Government, and Cheap Lives
By Bryant Simon
New Press.
303 pp. $26.95
2 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
The Deadly 1991 Hamlet Fire Exposed the High Cost of “Cheap”
A new book argues that more than emergency unpreparedness and locked doors led to the deaths of 25 workers in the chicken factory blaze
Aftermath of the fire at Imperial Foods processing plant in Hamlet, North Carolina (Tom MacCallum)
By Anna Diamond
SMITHSONIAN.COM
SEPTEMBER 8, 2017
When one thinks of the worst industrial accidents in United States history, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911 springs to mind. One-hundred-forty-six workers, most of them poor, Jewish and Italian immigrant women and girls, died when a fire engulfed three floors of the factory’s building. Horrifyingly, the stairwell doors and exits were locked, standard operating procedure for supervisors hoping to maximize productivity, curb theft and keep out union organizers. The sole fire escape collapsed as the workers tried to flee and the firefighters’ rescue ladders couldn’t extend high enough, leaving dozens of the women to jump to their deaths.
The tragic incident spurred a number of labor regulations, such as New York’s mandate for better fire safety efforts and workplace ventilation, and began a national conversation about what the government can or should do to prevent such occurrences. Leading New York politicians like Al Smith, the reform-minded governor and 1928 Democratic presidential candidate, and Francis Perkins, the labor activist who would become FDR’s secretary of labor, ushered in a shift in governance that prioritized worker safety. In this post-Triangle era, the social contract was re-written to ensure a safety net, meant to protect the vulnerable members of society.
Eighty years after Triangle, a fire broke out at an Imperial Food Products plant in Hamlet, North Carolina, when a fryer ignited and flames fed off grease and oils on the factory floor. As the fire raged, the building’s sprinkler system failed, forcing workers to run through heavy smoke. Desperate to find exits, only to find locked doors, the victims collapsed into piles of bodies as the carbon monoxide overtook them. Of the 81 employees working at the time, 25 died and an additional 40 were injured.
Why the Hamlet fire happened, and why so little changed culturally and politically to improve safety at worksites around the country in its aftermath, is central to a new book by historian Bryant Simon, a professor at Temple University. The Hamlet Fire: A Tragic Story of Cheap Food, Cheap Government, and Cheap Lives functions as its own assembly—or disassembly—line, intent on figuring out, step by step, how this tragedy was manufactured. It wasn’t just the locked doors, or the lack of safety drills—although those certainly contributed.
....
A new book argues that more than emergency unpreparedness and locked doors led to the deaths of 25 workers in the chicken factory blaze
Aftermath of the fire at Imperial Foods processing plant in Hamlet, North Carolina (Tom MacCallum)
By Anna Diamond
SMITHSONIAN.COM
SEPTEMBER 8, 2017
When one thinks of the worst industrial accidents in United States history, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911 springs to mind. One-hundred-forty-six workers, most of them poor, Jewish and Italian immigrant women and girls, died when a fire engulfed three floors of the factory’s building. Horrifyingly, the stairwell doors and exits were locked, standard operating procedure for supervisors hoping to maximize productivity, curb theft and keep out union organizers. The sole fire escape collapsed as the workers tried to flee and the firefighters’ rescue ladders couldn’t extend high enough, leaving dozens of the women to jump to their deaths.
The tragic incident spurred a number of labor regulations, such as New York’s mandate for better fire safety efforts and workplace ventilation, and began a national conversation about what the government can or should do to prevent such occurrences. Leading New York politicians like Al Smith, the reform-minded governor and 1928 Democratic presidential candidate, and Francis Perkins, the labor activist who would become FDR’s secretary of labor, ushered in a shift in governance that prioritized worker safety. In this post-Triangle era, the social contract was re-written to ensure a safety net, meant to protect the vulnerable members of society.
Eighty years after Triangle, a fire broke out at an Imperial Food Products plant in Hamlet, North Carolina, when a fryer ignited and flames fed off grease and oils on the factory floor. As the fire raged, the building’s sprinkler system failed, forcing workers to run through heavy smoke. Desperate to find exits, only to find locked doors, the victims collapsed into piles of bodies as the carbon monoxide overtook them. Of the 81 employees working at the time, 25 died and an additional 40 were injured.
Why the Hamlet fire happened, and why so little changed culturally and politically to improve safety at worksites around the country in its aftermath, is central to a new book by historian Bryant Simon, a professor at Temple University. The Hamlet Fire: A Tragic Story of Cheap Food, Cheap Government, and Cheap Lives functions as its own assembly—or disassembly—line, intent on figuring out, step by step, how this tragedy was manufactured. It wasn’t just the locked doors, or the lack of safety drills—although those certainly contributed.
....