Will My Job Burn? (1977)

[Music] Well, it's been 20 months since the fire and everything has been downhill since the fire. It never entered my mind. I thought I had security. I was set for the my working years with a pension forthcoming. I still find it hard to believe that a fire could do this to so many people, especially myself. Really, it's it's unbelievable. I had never thought of working any other place. I thought I was set for the rest of my working days. [Music] Psychologically, it's it's it's sometimes you're bitter, sometimes you're disgusted. Uh really, you don't know what your next emotion is going to be. Uh I'm sure my children are aware of my unemployment because it's brought up to them every now and then through their schoolmates. Your father doesn't work. My father's got a job. My kids tell me, they bring it home. My wife uh I know she would love a break now and then to go somewhere for a weekend or a week or two weeks, but there's no way I can do anything comparable to getting to that end. It seems that there isn't just any monies. The car, the medical bills, you have to have Blue Cross and CMS with a family. You can't do without it. Two movies in a couple years. That's the extent of our socializing. I've looked and searched and begged and went all over for employment and I didn't seem to have any luck at all. I'm almost the end of my rope now. My benefits are about run out and I really have nothing in sight. Even if no one is killed or injured, everyone loses when a factory burns. America's economic health is sustained by her manufacturing. Yet each year we are ravaged by over 50,000 fires in manufacturing plants. No one escapes the terrible economic damage caused by these tragedies. Every year they destroy 435 million worth of plant property, incinerate thousands of jobs, and cause uncounted losses in potential sales. For employees, such fires are devastating blows from which many never recover. For management, they often mean bankruptcy and factory closure. Before the fire, I worked at the plant 8 years. And after since the fire, I've been out of work 2 years. And it's very frustrating going around from one place to another looking for a job and they always tell you the same thing, we're not hiring. The main reason why I went to work after my children got up, you know, big enough for me to go to work was uh to give my children a better life than I had. Not that my life was so bad, but I wanted them to have better things. I used to think when it was a fire and a plant that it was management's problem, but I've changed my mind in the last two years because I if it has reached me where in two before, you know, it never bothered. Oh, this plant a fire and some plant, you know, and they're going to collect the insurance. But I learned differently in the last two years because it has affected me with the loss of a salary. You collect unemployment but for so long and then it runs out. Grace Small's job is gone because her plant burned. One more statistic in a national tragedy of waste. The fire was Saturday night and I didn't hear the fire at all or explosion or anything. And uh the next morning I saw some people I worked with and they told me we're all we're all done. We're out of work. And they told me no, the whole place burnt down. the whole factory. I couldn't believe it. I figured no problem finding a job, you know, but uh it really did affect me in the long run. I figured I'd be able to work maybe 3, four months tops, but it just kept on going longer. 6 months then to a year. It was really tough on my wife and my in-laws and myself too. Like we had a lot of financial commitments we had to meet and uh we had to borrow a lot of money from my in-laws and it got to the point like um you have no self-respect for yourself. We're taking handouts and stuff like that. and I was trying to find a job, but as I said, it was tough. I enjoy being back to work. Things are better with my wife. We could afford things that we couldn't afford with the time I was out of work. These people are fire casualties because their jobs were incinerated. This year alone, thousands of other workers will be burned out of their jobs. Must their plants burn? The answer can be no. Because it has been estimated that three out of every four industrial fires are caused by human error and people can learn not to burn their jobs. It is vital that all workers and managers learn about fire. For even in modern well-gineered industrial buildings, they are often suddenly confronted with fire emergencies. The majority of industrial fires that cause multiple deaths are the result of flash fires or explosions. Most of the fires that snuff out lives and jobs can be prevented. But employers, unions, engineers, safety personnel, and other workers have to know what to do, and they have to care enough to want to. I've been here approximately 22 years. is I came to work here as a mechanic. We first started out here, people had no conception of what fire was and what safety was. I have worked my way up to the present position that I have, which includes safety direction, fire brigade work and whatnot. I think this is a very very important thing that has to take place between the local fire department and the fire brigade in any factory. chief will come in usually twice a year or so or more and depending on the problems that we have. If I feel that we have a problem concerning the safety of the factory with fires, then I ask him to come in with the fire marshall and we go over the whole thing. His suggestions are then evaluated by myself and then taken to management. Well, in this particular plant, uh what we have is a a company that's concerned concerned deeply with fire. They take all kinds of precautions as far as uh uh fire starting. We have set up numerous policies that are distributed to the people. We hold our fire brigade drills and we have our uh weekly paper that we send out with the every week that gives the uh people about the factory a little knowledge of what we are doing and what we would like them to participate in. The plant is sprinklered and also they have a fire brigade uh which they uh in this plant are fully trained. We have seen very good progress in this factory at this time. Our safety record is improved. We have had no large fires. If a fire were to start in the plant, they would give quick action in starting to fight the fire until our arrival from the fire department. Job uh starts with uh the higherup and management. And after we got around to stating to them what we wanted, why we wanted, we have their backing 100%. They have given us the time and the money to get a good fire brigade started and a good safety program. There is always the possibility of a fire starting anywhere. The greatest peril from fire and explosion exists in those industries where low flashoint flammable liquids are processed or used, where gases are utilized, and where combustible dust products such as flour are manufactured. But vigilance to commonplace manufacturing processes such as grinding is also vital if people and jobs are not to burn. In this plant, flammable liquids are always labeled. As in most plants, they're stored away from flame and hot work in separate rooms or buildings. Workers here make certain that empty containers which once held flammable liquids are steamed or purged with chemicals in order to eliminate any remaining flammable vapors. When this plant changes a manufacturing process, workers and managers learn all they can about the fire characteristics of the new materials and machines which will be involved. Equally important, they investigate what possible hazards may be introduced by the new process itself. But the people here know that despite exotic new chemicals, common substances such as gasoline, shellac, and paint thinner often pose the greatest fire hazard. They've learned to clean up oil spills when they happen. When workclo become soiled with oil or solvents, they get changed. When they transfer a flammable liquid, they bond the containers together and ground them. In this department, a single spark could be deadly. My job at the union is a shop committee man. I represent 3,500 people in the negotiating end of the contract. In our negotiations, we place uh safety as a high priority issue equal to all other major benefits as wages and fringe benefits. We talked about fire safety as it applies to our employees. And we were successful in setting up certain preventative type things that we would cooperate with management. Today we've sort of changed our priorities or put on an equal footing with our economic gains, our conditions in the workplace, our uh likelihood of being burned out in the event of fire because it matters very little to our people in the plant whether they lose their job because of a layoff or a major fire that might suddenly put us all out of work. And we look upon it as a very serious thing. But fire doesn't have to take your job. In this plant, safety regulations are insisted on, whether the department be a drafting room or an assembly line. When the safety director carries out his inspections with the fire brigade chief, he is visible evidence of top management's determination to maintain fire safety. Not always visible to plant workers were the long deliberations when plans were made for new operations, when investments were made in new machinery, when designs were drawn for expanded facilities. Each decision had to be weighed with fire protection, fire prevention, and plant safety in mind. But when the safety director and I make our uh regular uh inspections, we feel that it helps the people in the plant to know that we are safety minded. Electrical equipment can be one of the biggest uh problems as far as fire safety goes. Um almost uh with 100 eyelet machines in the plant that we do have, lubrication for instance of motors uh is very important. uh a check on all of the electrical boxes, the sensoring systems and so forth has got to be periodically made because they do present a possible fire danger. As far as electrical equipment goes, uh we have to check for frayed wires, uh the possibility of shortcircuiting. Uh we do use a lot of lubricants around our electrical uh devices. We have to keep up on our toes, that's all. Well, the sprinkler system can be a very important thing because it's an automatic system that goes off with a fire is that no one can pile uh according to our rules any closer than 3 ft from a sprinkler head. And the reason being that you cut off the effectiveness of that sprinkler head if you pile things too close to it. Whether policing highf fire risk areas like this carpentry shop, educating employees to deposit trash in trash cans, or seeing to it that custodians provide ashtrays and butt cans for smoking materials, it is the safety director who ensures a firesafe work environment. Whenever we have any kind of welding or overhead cutting or grinding, there's always a man in this company especially that stands by on a firewatch. Well, I've been working at this plant for 25 years and I've been on a fire brigade for about 20 of them and I've seen cases where people got hurt just because of careless carelessness. So that's why we take these precautions. I think any worker can protect his own job in particular by taking little precautions, watch what they smoke, watch for sparks, and whatever, not only for fire, but for anything in general. And this this in a big way will protect their jobs and their co-workers. When fire destroys an industrial plant, there are more victims than those who suffer burns and pain. [Music] I think that uh I'm hoping that it would never happen again to me or to anybody else to go through what I had to go through. People don't realize how lucky you are to have a job today. Being employed since I was 16 and and suddenly getting out of work after 28 years with the same employer. It's a feeling of humiliation, degradation. Sometimes it's a feeling of shame. You just can't get used to it. These men know full well that there are no shortcuts to fire safety. But they know, too, that there are even fewer shortcuts when you're recuperating from a severe burn or pounding the streets looking for another job because your plant burned down. Safety is bought with care, with persistence, and with training that can save lives and jobs. Sprinklers can save lives and jobs, but only if the water supply valves are checked and left open. Alarms can save lives and jobs, but only if they are always in working order. Extinguishers can save lives and jobs, but only if they are inspected regularly, kept charged, and constantly available for the fire no one expected. And well-lit evacuation routes can save lives, too. Every worker and manager should know alternate escape routes and practice using them. Fire escape doors are often locked for security reasons. Nothing could be more shortsighted or tragic. The most valuable property in an industrial plant is the people who work there. And in the final reckoning, it is the people who work there who most often determine whether or not their jobs will be consumed by a fire. If people and jobs are not to burn, it will be because workers on the line care enough to be alert to fire hazards in their work area and because they care enough to train for a fire emergency. If people and jobs are not to burn, it will be because managers care enough to insist on rigorous inspection and maintenance. If people and jobs are not to burn, it will be because unions care enough to make their members understand that fire safety is everybody's business and in everybody's interest. And if people and jobs are not to burn, it will be because plant owners care enough to invest the time, the money, and the effort necessary to keep a workplace safe from [Music] fire. There are already too many casualties from industrial fires. If we care enough, we don't have to add another name. [Music]