California Ranch Foods, a food processing plant based in Vernon, guilty of two employees for the death of two employees in the workplace and paid a little more than $ 6 million in a criminal contract last month. The fees come from a nitrogen leak dated December 1, 2020 in a chilled storage room in which the 56-year-old Baldemar Gonsales from Los Angeles and 54-year-old Maria Osynet suffocated.
The district prosecutor's office of Los Angeles, who worked from the investigation of Cal/Osha, concluded the agreement in July. The deal reduces the fees from crime, grants the company for three years of probation and enables it to continue operating continuously.
In addition to a criminal offense of 1 million US dollars, the company will donate 4 million US dollars to local food banks, pay $ 50,000 in Cal/Osha and 1.6 million US dollars for “extended security measures”. These sums, which appear on paper, amount to a minor operating cost for the Golden West Food Group, whose annual sales are estimated at 452 million US dollars.
The criminal punishment follows the families of the victims of a civil lawsuit of 35 million US dollars.
An avoidable death at the workplace
On the morning of the incident, Gonales entered the cooled room after a malfunction had released liquid nitrogen and repressed oxygen. He collapsed almost immediately. An hour later Osyguss, who was not aware of the danger, occurred and suffered the same fate. Neither had flight. The alarm system of the room – its only potential warning – was to be rusted and it could not sound.
Michael Bright, director of the Bureau of Investigations by Cal/Osha, described the company's behavior as a “gross negligence”. The investigators found several outrageous violations: no functioning oxygen monitors, no ventilation for processing a leak, no external legible alley sensors, no equipment for emergency roasts, no proper training of the employee in dealing with compressed gas and no maintenance of the alarm system.
Since then, the company has “retrofitted” its systems to comply with security codes, and an open admission that these measures could and should have existed before two people have lost their lives.
Cal/Osha boss Debra Lee said: “If employers do not protect the employees … the state will take them into account.” In reality, the plea agreement is not an accountability, but a sign for the company.
Regulatory authorities as accomplices
The role of the government in this tragedy cannot be understood. Cal/Osha has not been able to carry out a consistent, thorough inspection for years. A current test by the California auditor showed that the agency is in a state of advanced expiry. Lack of personnel, outdated procedures and an inspection rate that is far below the minimum rate required for the security of employee security are the result of a conscious political program.
The state administration of the Democrat Gavin Newsom has starved Cal/Osha to resources and rely on the union bureaucracy to suffocate the opposition of the employees. This is the Californian expression of a nationwide policy that is pursued both under Democrats and the Republicans in order to reduce regulatory protection for the benefit of the company profit.
At the federal level, Trump's Minister of Labor Lori Chavez deremer announced the most extensive deregulation attack in July: elimination ten regulations for each new and the surrashing of Oshas Budget by almost 8 percent. This means 223 fewer employees, 30 percent fewer inspections and a green light for companies America to reduce costs at the expense of the life of the workers.
The result will be both predictable and quantifiable: The cuts will greatly underestimate deaths in the workplace recorded in the United States-a number that is the true tribute as soon as occupational diseases and long-term exposure are included.
A pattern of industrial slaughtering
The California Ranch case case follows a long series of avoidable deaths at the workplace, which is caused by cost reduction, security and non -existent supervision. In just four months this year, a number of terrible deaths at work gave a terrifying insight into the real situation.
This included the star country Ronald Adams Sr., the steel worker Michael Dewaine Townsend, the construction worker Ryan Starnes, the grave collapse victim Ronald Baquera Jr., the steel plant worker Tuah Kollie and the South Korean contractor Kim Jung Won, who was crushed at LG Energy Solutions.
In Vernon himself, a city city that is devoted to the unchecked industrial exploitation, the Guatemaltek immigrant Brayan Neftali Otoniel Canu Joj was sucked into a meat mill. In Nebraska, Dylan D. Danielson and his two small children were killed in an explosion of biofuels.
Finally, the massive explosion of US Steel's Clairton Coke outside of Pittsburgh claimed the life of Timothy Quinn and another worker whose name has not yet been published, and critically injured five more.
Each of these deaths, such as those of Gonsales and Osyguss, was completely avoidable. The fact that they performed was the direct consequence of employers who ignored security protocols, the supervisory authorities, the existing laws, and the profit system that treats human life as an available life.
The millions of fines and donations of the plea are presented as justice. You are not like that. For a company with nine -digit income, such punishments are the costs of shops. They are deported and absorbed against taxes without regaining the executive bonuses or shareholders.
The only force that is able to stop this slaughter is the working class itself, which is organized regardless of the political parties controlled by companies and the union apparatus. This means that a rank-and-file committees are checked at every workplace democratic bodies that are controlled by employees and not by trade union officers-with the authority to stop production if uncertain conditions occur, full transparency for dangers and management are punishable for endangered life.
Such committees have to coordinate across industries and national borders and to connect food processing workers with steel workers, cars, tree manners, logistics workers and educators in order to start a combined fight against cross -party war against security and living standards.
Investigations must be started in Ronald Adams' WSWS examination, Sr.'s death. In a recently published public session, a decision was unanimously adopted in order to create the establishment of rank-and-file security committees at every workplace that was democratically checked by the employees themselves and regardless of the pro corporate unions in order to enforce safe working conditions and uncover dangerous practices.
The struggle for security in the workplace cannot be separated from the fight against the capitalist profit system. It is the logic of the profit, not the “incompetence” or “supervision”, which the California Ranch Foods led to a death trap for years.
The memory of Baldemar Gonsales and Maria Osyguss must serve as a rally. Workers everywhere must reject the official story that justice has done. True justice will only come if the working class takes power and reorganizes society on the basis of human needs and not on the basis of private profit.