Inside Alabama’s Auto Jobs Boom: Cheap Wages, Little Training, Crushed Limbs

[skidadl]

Inspectors are very prone to holding up things until they are offered an incentive. The will never come right out and ask for a bribe or favor but if you listen carefully they will drop hints about what they want. E.G. ". Man I saw a really neat pair of boots down at Jones boot store. They had my size to. I have worn a size 10 since I was 17 years old. How soon did you need this job inspected?"

Or you can just ignore them.

 

[DLK150]

My arm was crushed in a haul off machine(Motorized, counter revolving rubber belts) while working at a polyethylene pipe plant back in NJ. There was a rubber bladder between the extruder and the cooling tank and the supervisor told me to pull it through the tank and get it started. I told him the bladder was too far away from the extruder head, resulting in folds that were deeper than usual.

There was a blowout that got stuck in the bladder right when I was inches away from the haul off machine, I tried to pull it free and when I did, my hand went between the belts, pulled my arm in and started grinding away at it because they were only around an inch and a half apart. I yelled, dropped to my knees to keep my arm from breaking from the angle.

It was early in the shift and there weren't many other workers around but this little old Jamaican guy ran over and tried to use the wheel on top used to adjust the belts up and down to raise them but made it tighter instead. I pushed him away with my left hand, got myself calmed down and hit the emergency stop button. That set off an alarm that got someone else's attention and they freed my arm.

They called an ambulance which took me to the hospital to get it checked. I remember the girl posing my arm for the x-ray twisting and manipulating my arm into the right position and thinking "What the ****, you idiot?! My arm was just crushed, ya know."

I ended up just losing a huge patch of skin on bicep and walked around with my arm in a sling for a month. My bicep ached off and on for years after though.

Anyhoo, the president of the company found out I been dabbling with PCs and called to ask if I wanted to do some data entry in the office using Excel, probably so I wouldn't file a worker's comp claim. I had bills to pay and the claim process was slow as dirt in NJ back then so I said eff it, why not. Even though I had done data entry before, my arm couldn't even handle it for eight hours straight.

I had to give up after a couple of weeks and decided to use all my vacation time for the year to take a trip to Myrtle Beach and rest.

 

[L.T. Fan]

Or you can just ignore them.

Yes you can and the scheduling gets farther down the road. I am not advocating a payoff but that is a system that is in play most of the time.

 

[Jiggyfly]

You're right, they prefered a multi million dollar payout over a few thousand dollar light curtain. Jesus you're ignorant sometimes. But my guess is you've never been a press operator and have no idea what that really is or what it entails. You're just so eager to think employers hate their employees.

Your guess s wrong I have worked in these types of environments several times most recently when I was doing manufacturing of oil well pipes, there were press machines all over the place.

And once again with the hyperbole nobody said employers hate their employees but it is a fact that a lot of these places do the bare minimum when it comes to training and they will cut corners to keep production up.

Man you are taking this Ayn Rand thing to another level.

 

[Jiggyfly]

Um, because Bipo the walking anti-Trump meme posted the story then followed it up with the standard stuff about the poor getting fukkkked and what not. Just pointing out that the American worker is fukkkked no matter who is in charge.

And yeah, the supposed gender wage gap is not as simple as left-wing dogma makes it out to be. I also mentioned the silliness of focusing on the trans bathroom issue, but I see you didn't have a problem with that one. Wow centrist wow.

Yes Bipo can be a trigger.

Just seemed a bit out of left field and to tell you the truth I did not get to the trans stuff.

I still have no idea how that does anything to refute me being a centrist, I don't a lot of people understands what that means.

 

[Jiggyfly]

My arm was crushed in a haul off machine(Motorized, counter revolving rubber belts) while working at a polyethylene pipe plant back in NJ. There was a rubber bladder between the extruder and the cooling tank and the supervisor told me to pull it through the tank and get it started. I told him the bladder was too far away from the extruder head, resulting in folds that were deeper than usual.

There was a blowout that got stuck in the bladder right when I was inches away from the haul off machine, I tried to pull it free and when I did, my hand went between the belts, pulled my arm in and started grinding away at it because they were only around an inch and a half apart. I yelled, dropped to my knees to keep my arm from breaking from the angle.

It was early in the shift and there weren't many other workers around but this little old Jamaican guy ran over and tried to use the wheel on top used to adjust the belts up and down to raise them but made it tighter instead. I pushed him away with my left hand, got myself calmed down and hit the emergency stop button. That set off an alarm that got someone else's attention and they freed my arm.

They called an ambulance which took me to the hospital to get it checked. I remember the girl posing my arm for the x-ray twisting and manipulating my arm into the right position and thinking "What the ****, you idiot?! My arm was just crushed, ya know."

I ended up just losing a huge patch of skin on bicep and walked around with my arm in a sling for a month. My bicep ached off and on for years after though.

Anyhoo, the president of the company found out I been dabbling with PCs and called to ask if I wanted to do some data entry in the office using Excel, probably so I wouldn't file a worker's comp claim. I had bills to pay and the claim process was slow as dirt in NJ back then so I said eff it, why not. Even though I had done data entry before, my arm couldn't even handle it for eight hours straight.

I had to give up after a couple of weeks and decided to use all my vacation time for the year to take a trip to Myrtle Beach and rest.

That sucks and it is usually how these things happen.

The most effective rule I saw was lock out and tag out procedures before doing any work around and in machines.

 

[DLK150]

That sucks and it is usually how these things happen.

The most effective rule I saw was lock out and tag out procedures before doing any work around and in machines.

There were procedures to follow but they rarely were. Get the product out at all costs was the mantra and the employees were poorly trained. They unionized after a couple of years but the local union guys were in the back pocket of the people running the show. The guy that was the shop steward had no clue about filing grievances. One worker filed a grievance because there was a Coke machine in the break room instead of Pepsi.

One time a guy tried putting out an electrical fire at one of the extruder heads by using water from one of the cooling tanks and I yelled "Don't do that, idiot! Use the fire extinguisher!"

They were such a bunch of idiots.

 

[BipolarFuk]

My arm was crushed in a haul off machine(Motorized, counter revolving rubber belts) while working at a polyethylene pipe plant back in NJ. There was a rubber bladder between the extruder and the cooling tank and the supervisor told me to pull it through the tank and get it started. I told him the bladder was too far away from the extruder head, resulting in folds that were deeper than usual.

There was a blowout that got stuck in the bladder right when I was inches away from the haul off machine, I tried to pull it free and when I did, my hand went between the belts, pulled my arm in and started grinding away at it because they were only around an inch and a half apart. I yelled, dropped to my knees to keep my arm from breaking from the angle.

It was early in the shift and there weren't many other workers around but this little old Jamaican guy ran over and tried to use the wheel on top used to adjust the belts up and down to raise them but made it tighter instead. I pushed him away with my left hand, got myself calmed down and hit the emergency stop button. That set off an alarm that got someone else's attention and they freed my arm.

They called an ambulance which took me to the hospital to get it checked. I remember the girl posing my arm for the x-ray twisting and manipulating my arm into the right position and thinking "What the ****, you idiot?! My arm was just crushed, ya know."

I ended up just losing a huge patch of skin on bicep and walked around with my arm in a sling for a month. My bicep ached off and on for years after though.

Anyhoo, the president of the company found out I been dabbling with PCs and called to ask if I wanted to do some data entry in the office using Excel, probably so I wouldn't file a worker's comp claim. I had bills to pay and the claim process was slow as dirt in NJ back then so I said eff it, why not. Even though I had done data entry before, my arm couldn't even handle it for eight hours straight.

I had to give up after a couple of weeks and decided to use all my vacation time for the year to take a trip to Myrtle Beach and rest.

Sorry you were unfortunate enough to work for one of those scum companies that don't give a shit about you.

PRODUCTION AT ALL COSTS!!!

 

[Jiggyfly]

There were procedures to follow but they rarely were. Get the product out at all costs was the mantra and the employees were poorly trained. They unionized after a couple of years but the local union guys were in the back pocket of the people running the show. The guy that was the shop steward had no clue about filing grievances. One worker filed a grievance because there was a Coke machine in the break room instead of Pepsi.

One time a guy tried putting out an electrical fire at one of the extruder heads by using water from one of the cooling tanks and I yelled "Don't do that, idiot! Use the fire extinguisher!"

They were such a bunch of idiots.

Yeah that sounds like a real cluster.

 

[DLK150]

Yeah that sounds like a real cluster.

I won't drag this out much with all the tales I could tell because I could probably write a book about my time there.

I will mention coworkers hiding behind the material silos or rail cars outside to smoke some grass on breaks while on the job, drinking beer while operating equipment because it was Friday night and "dueling" with forklifts randomly. You weren't supposed to wear baggy clothing when operating a wind up machine but one guy wore a baggy sweatshirt, the arms on the wind up caught up in his sweatshirt because he was being careless, picked him up and threw him around fifteen feet through the air over the machine.

The president and vice president both skimmed profits from the owners by adjusting bulk prices and the VP drank on the job regularly.

That idiotic place was like the Animal House of workplace environments.

 

[Jiggyfly]

I won't drag this out much with all the tales I could tell because I could probably write a book about my time there.

I will mention coworkers hiding behind the material silos or rail cars outside to smoke some grass on breaks while on the job, drinking beer while operating equipment because it was Friday night and "dueling" with forklifts randomly. You weren't supposed to wear baggy clothing when operating a wind up machine but one guy wore a baggy sweatshirt, the arms on the wind up caught up in his sweatshirt because he was being careless, picked him up and threw him around fifteen feet through the air over the machine.

The president and vice president both skimmed profits from the owners by adjusting bulk prices and the VP drank on the job regularly.

That idiotic place was like the Animal House of workplace environments.

That's Jersey.

 

[DLK150]

Okay, one more just because I happened to think of it.

The company had their own fleet of trucks and delivered all over the east coast. One night, one of the drivers got sleepy while making a run to North Carolina. He had been toking, got sleepy and stopped with his trailer squarely on some train tracks to take a nap because he probably didn't notice where he stopped. A train approached, the engineer saw the truck too late to stop and basically destroyed it. The trailer, rig and his entire load was destroyed but he managed to walk away without a scratch. One of the rare times TPTB in the office fired someone after effing up but this time it resulted in the loss of the truck and all the product he was transporting.

 

[Cowboysrock55]

Okay, one more just because I happened to think of it.

The company had their own fleet of trucks and delivered all over the east coast. One night, one of the drivers got sleepy while making a run to North Carolina. He had been toking, got sleepy and stopped with his trailer squarely on some train tracks to take a nap because he probably didn't notice where he stopped. A train approached, the engineer saw the truck too late to stop and basically destroyed it. The trailer, rig and his entire load was destroyed but he managed to walk away without a scratch. One of the rare times TPTB in the office fired someone after effing up but this time it resulted in the loss of the truck and all the product he was transporting.

In my best Bipo voice:

"What a scum company that didn't give a shit about it's employees."

 

[skidadl]

In my best Bipo voice:

"What a scum company that didn't give a shit about it's employees."

obviously the evil company caused this.

 

[L.T. Fan]

obviously the evil company caused this.

BiPo is so deeply embedded in the union philosophy that no one will probably won't be able to locate him at the rapture.

 

[DLK150]

In my best Bipo voice:

"What a scum company that didn't give a shit about it's employees."

In all fairness, they didn't GAS about anything but the bottom line but they let a *lot* of crap slide. The aforementioned driver got mad at the president one day, walked into his office, pulled out then waved his d!ck at him. He then proceeded to piss on his desk and yet some of his coworkers were aghast that he was fired. The Pepsi over Coke guy once cut the cord to the Coke dispenser with a pipe cutter. While it was still plugged in. I would say he was as dumb as a box of rocks but that would be insulting rocks.

 

[BipolarFuk]

 

[L.T. Fan]

What you fail to recognize is the lifestyle differential. Home were extremely modest, you bought used cars because new ones were not affordable. Televisions as an example were extravagant for a 21 inch black and white screen that cost as much today the as a 50 inch color flatscreen. People rarely ate out and not everyone had a backyard grill. On and on. The lifestyles and living conditions now for the working class is way up to the level of what mostly mid executive level families enjoyed then.

This depiction is way overblown and is no way close to a realistic comparison.

 

[Cowboysrock55]

For barely getting by that Walmart man and woman look like they are eating pretty well.

 

[NoDak]

For barely getting by that Walmart man and woman look like they are eating pretty well.

They vote Democrat.