Fighting for Safe Jobs, Part Two: The Investigation Begins

In 1962, Neu and Proler Steel Corporation set up operations on Terminal Island. Terminal Island has a forbidding history. Two islands were dredged and merged in the late 1920s. Rattlesnake Island, the repository for reptiles that washed down the San Gabriel River during flood season, was expanded with the remains of Deadman’s Island.

The excavation unearthed 20 skeletons, including one with a sword at his side, another with a hole from an arrowhead in his skull, a blond woman, and Black Hawk, the last Indigenous American who lived on nearby San Nicholas Island—all shrouded in mystery. Once the graveyard and the snake pit were combined, the port of San Pedro created a four-and-a-half-square-mile island. The new channel, 35 feet deep and 1,000 feet wide, allowed large vessels to enter the Port of Los Angeles, which would eventually become the busiest harbor in the United States. Terminal Island became the way station linking the Port of Los Angeles to the Port of Long Beach.

On this industrial island, a close-knit community of roughly 3,500 Japanese fishermen and their families occupied a charming village on the south end, known as Fish Harbor. The local tuna-canning industry—including StarKist and Chicken of the Sea—was built with the labor of these skilled Japanese men and the women who worked in the canneries. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the FBI swooped in and incarcerated the great majority of residents in internment camps. Within three months, the community was emptied, and the navy razed their homes and shops.

Eventually, the Japanese residents were replaced with Slavic, Filipino, and Mexican workers. By 1946, Terminal Island had become the largest tuna-canning operation in the world, but the industry was mostly gone by the time I learned about the island. I had been introduced to the hazards in the cannery industry after interviewing a worker in a hospital who had lost all his fingers on his right hand. At the Long Beach Cal/OSHA office, we were not mourning the closures of the canneries.

Long Beach Cal/OSHA supervisor Tom Butler.

After my rude welcome at Hugo Neu-Proler, I return to the Long Beach Cal/OSHA office for reinforcements to address the safety hazards. My supervisor, Tom Butler, assigns Ray Barkley, a soft-spoken, seasoned safety engineer from Waxahachie, Texas, who specializes in crane operation. We return to examine the operation.

The junk metal deposited by the trucks is separated into piles: large appliances, cars, motor mounts, wheels, industrial machinery, and metal machine turnings. The large scrap is dumped into the Prolerizer, which shreds it into manageable metal chunks. The smaller pieces are loaded into another mill known as the turnings crusher. The reduced scrap from the two mills travels on conveyors to the eddy current separator, which washes and separates out nonmetallic waste such as rubber, dirt, and lint, resulting in a hazardous byproduct known as fluff. The various remaining metal components are magnetically sorted in the heavy-metal separator, which pulls out steel and iron. Recycled steel and iron travel through chutes into the hulls of the waiting freighters. The remaining nonmagnetic metals are conveyed to the smelter operation that removes the unwanted lead in order to reclaim the valuable aluminum, zinc, and copper.

The workers are stationed on elevated platforms, feeding and checking the mills or cleaning and monitoring the flow from underneath the gigantic machinery. Unlike a contained factory, this is open range, with the wind, smoke, mist, and fog creating a toxic atmosphere. It is a 24-7 hellish operation, and the scrap just keeps coming, a never-ending river of metallic sewage.

My instinct is to do the right thing, conduct a wall-to-wall inspection of every potential safety and health hazard. I request additional assistance from the office and proceed to lay out a plan for a small team of industrial hygienists to monitor dust, fume, and noise exposures at the navy yard.

Our team works diligently for two weeks: arriving early, attaching personal air monitors to workers to quantify the amount of dust or fumes that they might inhale during a shift. We spend our days on-site observing and checking the field monitors, taking photos, keeping a safe distance, but staying close enough to see what’s going on.

Conditions are affected by the wind, the amount and type of scrap, and, of course, management’s efforts to circumvent certain operations while we are present.

I sit sentry, not daring to interfere or get in harm’s way. I begin to notice how workers adapt to the wind and smoke, avoid moving machinery, and keep an eye out for unexpected objects like the piece of metal that nearly got me my first day.

Everyone—and everything—is in constant motion, and the ceaseless pace makes it impossible to hold conversations while they work. There is no downtime, and workers appear reluctant to come forward. I collect 19 home phone numbers to speak with them away from work.

Spanish is preferred, since English is the language of management. When they realize I speak proficient Spanish, workers are more forthcoming, but nonetheless I am still considered an outsider. Trust does not come easily, despite my efforts to do right by the scrap workers. The conversations always start with a denial that there are issues, explanations that lack emotion and detail. As I gently probe, descriptions of accidents, near misses, and health concerns emerge. They ask me the most obvious question: What can I do?

It frustrates me, but I cannot give them a concrete answer. It all depends on evidence and proof of danger linked to quantifiable data. I find out that many of the workers are in some way related—brothers, uncles, and nephews from the same close-knit Mexican pueblos.

What also becomes apparent is that there are divisions between union supporters and those who aspire to management roles. The work does not lend itself to unity, despite the fact that they are loyal to the work itself, the integrity of doing it right.

Diane Factor on the job.

I wonder why anyone would choose to work in such a risky environment, but this is my concern, not theirs. They want these jobs, which provide steady income and security. I try to reassure them, but I fear that the samples I’m collecting may not accurately represent the potential hazards of their workplace brought on by so many variables: weather conditions, different kinds of scrap, the speed of the conveyor, and machine fallibility.

By August 23, my team and I have completed the Hugo Neu-Proler investigation and reviewed the lab results. Unfortunately, we are only able to document evidence to support seven citations, with one information memorandum regarding the baghouse in the smelter. The citations require new precautions, such as a deluge shower, proper storage and labeling of hazardous materials, more fire extinguishers and first aid kits, and safety training.

One safety citation is issued for an unguarded pipe jutting into a “well-used” path. We sampled for dust, fumes, heavy metals, acids, corrosives, and noise but didn’t find high exposures; therefore, we can’t require engineering controls or even respiratory protection. In fact, the exposure-monitoring results vindicate the company because they are below the permissible exposure limits.

Despite my interviews with workers who complained about rashes, dizziness, skin burns, smoke inhalation, shortness of breath, back pain, and ringing in the ears, the cause of these health concerns cannot be decisively linked to exposure data we collected.

Luisa Gratz, the union rep, is undeterred. She feels this is a step forward. She plans to file grievances to address some of the issues that are not regulated; she also proposes increasing the number of inspectors to watch out for explosives and flammables.

As if it had been preordained, on September 30, Gratz calls the office to tell us there has been an explosion resulting in injuries. I rush to the scene as the ambulance is pulling away carrying two workers, apparently badly burned.

James Wotherspoon and Gratz are yelling accusations at each other, and the workers surround them. I slip off from this scene to see what might have caused the explosion, quietly guided by two workers, who lead me to a site where a powdery substance is leaking from a shattered metal drum on the ground near the entrance to the turnings crusher. I am mortified.

I gather a sample of the dust and head for the lab. Despite all of my efforts to get this place cleaned up, I feel responsible. I could have prevented this catastrophe, had my closing conference with the union and management been more conclusive. I question not only my skills but my intentions as an inspector: my job is to make workplaces safer, and in this instance, I can’t help but feel that I failed. In any case, the Hugo Neu-Proler investigation is far from closed.•

Next Week: Back to the Beginning