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- <text id=92TT2139>
- <title>
- Sep. 28, 1992: Price of Neglect
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1992
- Sep. 28, 1992 The Economy
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- THE WEEK, Page 24
- SOCIETY
- Price of Neglect
- </hdr><body>
- <p>A chicken king goes to prison for the death of two dozen workers
- </p>
- <p> 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.
- </p>
- <p> 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.
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
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