Last Thursday, May 16, a veteran worker at the sprawling Ford Rouge complex in Dearborn, Michigan, collapsed and died on the shop floor after his shift at the body shop somewhere between 9:00 and 10:00 p.m. The deceased worker was identified as Darius Williams. Co-workers on the afternoon shift told the World Socialist Web Site that Williams was one of the highest seniority workers in the plant with 33 years at Ford.
His team leader reported that Williams had said good night before walking toward the exit with no sign of pain or discomfort. Workers nearby saw Darius crumpling to the floor unresponsive just before reaching the exit door.
An emergency response team attempted to revive Williams with a defibrillator but their efforts failed. As of this writing, there has been no report of a medical diagnosis to explain the sudden death of Darius Williams.
Over the last few years there have been scores of deaths at the Rouge complex. The company is systematically intensifying the rate of exploitation, laying off entire shifts and doubling and tripling the number of jobs an individual operator must perform. Many report that older workers are especially targeted for the grueling treatment in a deliberate effort to force them into early retirement, disability or death.
Workers at a recent factory meeting called by management reported that a co-worker defied intimidation to denounce this deliberate policy. He said:
They just double up jobs for the people who have high seniority—make them do two jobs and wait for them to drop dead. The speed-up is pervasive and many workers do not speak out, because the union has done nothing to defend their co-workers who have.
What is the point of having a union if youre going to let union members drop dead on the shop floor?
The union doesn’t have control over your personal health. There is no cause of death mentioned in the article.
The article also mentions how much they have increased each employee’s workload, on purpose, to basically punish them.
My personal health chart says I have carpal tunnel. Factory work is why I have carpal tunnel.
There is a direct correlation between working environments and employee health. There are hundreds and hundreds of environmental factors, whether working with heat, carsonogenic materials, heavy lifting, any kind of mining, risks are everywhere in the workforce.
If a company overworks employees, and maintains unsafe working environments, employee lives and health are increasingly placed at risk within sich environment.
The article is clear the company is overworking it’s employees on purpose.
An engineer asked me to run two machines over covid. We normally had three people to run two machines. I was running one, and the only operator on that day. Two machines is not safe to run with one person, nor is it possible without risking material quality on the line I was focused on. I can make good material on this line, or scrap on two lines. Fuck in my work, I could easily get degloved, 3rd degree burns, lose a finger tip, tear my rotator cuff, break a bone …all events that did happen over the years at these machines from people not paying attention to safety, something I’m not willing to risk so this engineer can “try something” on a machine he cant run himself. I told him to fuck himself in so many words. But that’s employee ownership, and my boss had my back.
Shame on the Union for not standing up for these people. Shame on you for taking the corporate side.
He may have died from heart attack from poor diet- but the environmental factors within a workplace, a place you spend most your waking hours, absolutely have a correlation to ones personal health. Your comment really seems to ignore that, and I’m sorry, definitely pissed me off.
“The canary in the coal mine” saying has a literal and tangible origin, it’s not just some saying.
I care about my fellow workers health and safety, whether I like them as people or not, I still want all fellow workers to be safe. I hope you do too.