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Time - Man of the Year
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Time_Man_of_the_Year_Compact_Publishing_3YX-Disc-1_Compact_Publishing_1993.iso
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1993-04-08
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THE WEEK, Page 24SOCIETYPrice of Neglect
A chicken king goes to prison for the death of two dozen workers
Even in the best of times, it wasn't the best of jobs.
Chopping and cooking chicken parts for Imperial Food Products was
monotonous, relentless work, but the company's largely black and
female employees in Hamlet, North Carolina, were grateful for
it -- until that awful day last year when a hydraulic line that
ran the conveyor belt ruptured and sprayed flammable fluid that
ignited, incinerating 25 employees. Horror swiftly turned to
outrage when it was learned that the high death count was the
result of illegally locked plant doors and the absence of a
sprinkler system.
Last week Imperial owner Emmett Roe, 65, was sentenced to
19 years 11 months in jail as part of a plea bargain that let
his son Brad, the plant's operations manager, get off
scot-free. Relatives of the dead were outraged, yet the owner's
punishment was unusually strong for fire violations. "I can
understand the pain of the community, but this is by far the
stiffest sentence that I'm aware of for a worker-safety criminal
charge," says Douglas Fuller, a spokesman for the Labor
Department. That message will probably spread among plant
managers around the country.