Face to face with on-the-job fatalities

‘We’ve got an incident’

Dale Schotts can vividly recall parts of the autumn day in 2004 when rigging failed and a well-liked machine repairman was killed at the General Motors Powertrain plant in Warren, Mich. Other parts of that horrible day are just a blur.

Photo: VINCE PISCOPO

UAW Local 12 skilled-trades committeeman Bob Geiner, left, and steward Mike Mack of UAW Local 12 in Toledo

Dealing with on-the-job fatalities is heart-wrenching work for UAW members. After experiencing what happens when a friend and co-worker dies, it’s easy to understand why the UAW is so serious about health and safety.

In those difficult times, members seek to comfort one another on their loss, get professional help if necessary and improve on their local’s response to the tragedy.

In three of the fatalities, the worker was alone for the most part, a problem for skilled-trades workers who go into remote areas of worksites for maintenance jobs.

Schotts, the UAW Local 909 health and safety representative, heard the words no one wants to hear: “We’ve got an incident.”

When he arrived, another bad sign: Workers were standing around and machinery wasn’t running. Marcel Chagnon, a 53-year-old machine repair worker, was found dead near a pick-and-place robot.

Schotts got to work. He cordoned off the area with yellow caution tape and started taking pictures.

“At that point it was real, but it wasn’t real,” said Schotts, a journeyman pipe fitter. “It was like a dream.”

The long day was filled with interviews by the local police, county coroner and the Michigan Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

“I stayed numb for a few days,” he said.

The victim’s co-worker, who witnessed the incident, would never return to the plant.

Schotts said former UAW President Stephen P. Yokich told him, “All you have to do is your job and keep people safe.”

“This fatality brought that to life for me. I can’t walk by (unsafe) things. You can’t cut corners because you don’t know what cut corner will lead to a fatality,” Schotts added.

No one knows exactly why the rigging failed, Schotts said. But it made everyone in the skilled trades take stock. A survey led to 75 jobs where health and safety questions were raised. The majority had acceptable safe operating procedures (SOPs), and 25 were deemed safe if no deviations were made. Changes were made in SOPs for six jobs.

“We try to tighten up that process more and more each year,” Schotts said.

Mike Mack, the UAW Local 12 skilled-trades steward at Daimler-Chrysler’s Toledo (Ohio) North Assembly Plant, and Bob Geiner, the skilled-trades committeeman, got the call early in the morning of Feb. 12: incident in the battery washer area.

The 51-year-old victim, Michael Tiller, an electrician with 32 years of seniority, was found lying on the roller bed.

“Just please be hurt. Don’t be dead,” Mack recalled saying to himself. But by the time he got there, the coroner had been called.

The Toledo plant was the scene of a shooting in 2005, and rumors were already starting. There was wild speculation in the media about a “possible homicide.”

Mack, Geiner and plant chairman Dan Henneman knew they would have to get the facts out fast to stop the rumors. But first they acted to get the first-shift worker who found Tiller some immediate help.

The local’s employee assistance coordinator was called.

They met with management and other workers to determine the facts. They then met with the members, telling them what they knew then about the incident, which wasn’t much more than a highly regarded co-worker had died from an apparent fall, later ruled an accident by the coroner.

They made sure the immediate area of the accident was safe for members to return to their jobs by checking for electrical hazards and inactive safety devices.

“When there is a fatality, we have to assure our members that there is a safe environment,” Mack said.

Everyone knew something bad had happened when UAW Local 523 President Stan Burkeen went to the scene at the electrical arc furnace at the CC Metal Alloys plant in Calvert City, Ky., in January.

But like many skilled-trades workers, James Bains, the 64-year-old electrician who fell 66 feet to his death while in a man-lift changing light bulbs, was in a remote area of the plant.

Burkeen knew Bains – just 10 days away from his retirement was a “safe, conscientious worker who doesn’t take chances.”

The company’s health and safety representative was on the scene, as were OSHA and local authorities. But there was a change in attitude by the plant’s owner when the UAW Health and Safety Department sent its investigator, Burkeen said.

“The company let him in to look at the scene, but it wouldn’t let him in after that,” he said.

If a company has a commitment to health and safety, why, he thought, is he getting such a hard time from the plant owner?

A grievance over that issue has been filed. But the UAW offered the company the opportunity to participate in its health and safety programs at no cost. The company has been unwilling to commit.

“I’m going to keep pushing for the UAW programs,” Burkeen said, adding that the local’s health and safety committee found 75 issues they want addressed, including missing lock bolts on machinery and missing covers on electrical boxes. The company has been acting on these demands, he added.

Don Boehner, president of UAW Local 1596, had no problem getting the union’s investigator to the scene when Hector Rivas, a 57-year-old bus mechanic, died in March 2006 at the Roxbury, Mass., garage.

But it was pretty obvious what happened: Rivas was overcome by carbon monoxide from a generator inside a school bus service vehicle. The union brother who found him “took it really, really bad,” Boehner recalled.

The Boston City Schools, which contracts with First Student for bus service, offered grief counseling, which was accepted.

But had it not been for the city’s decision to accept a low-ball bid, Boehner thought, the counseling probably wouldn’t be necessary.

“To me, it was in direct relationship to the death,” Boehner said.

Boehner said First Student started out on the right foot, committing itself to preventive maintenance. But understaffed, and over the objections of the mechanics, the company began letting buses leave garages without proper maintenance. A collision due to faulty brakes put 12 children in the hospital. Another worker broke his pelvis when he was ordered to use a jack in an unsafe manner.

In September the Occupational Safety and Health Administration found First Student negligent in 12 health and safety standards. The company was fined $95,000 in total.

The community, tired of its children on unsafe buses, got behind the effort to change First Student’s operation.

When the fatality occurred, there was an outpouring of support for Rivas and his family, and outrage over First Student’s actions and the city’s lack of oversight, he said. Before the fatality, workers had asked for pipes to screw into the generators to ventilate the areas where they were working.

The Steelworkers, who represent bus drivers, and religious and civic groups partnered with Local 1596 to press for change. Four city councilors joined the effort.

One immediate change: The city’s representative now is in contact with the local on bus safety issues.

“The city is suddenly talking with us and wants to be involved with us,” Boehner said. “We have clout now that we never had before. Unfortunately, it took the death of a dear brother to make it happen.”

“Our goal is to never let him be forgotten and to ensure that there are no unsafe buses for the children of Boston,” Boehner said.

Vince Piscopo