Thirty years after 25 people lost their lives in a fire at a North Carolina chicken processing plant, two federal agencies haven't lived up to their promises to improve workplace safety, which irritates Congressman David Price.
Price sent a letter Wednesday to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Labor Secretary Martin Walsh, demanding to know when USDA food safety inspectors would be trained to recognize and report workplace safety concerns to the federal Occupational Health and Safety Administration, a proposal the two agencies agreed to in 1994.
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The agreement resulted from public outcry and demands for reform following a Sept. 3, 1991, fire at the Imperial Foods plant in Hamlet. Two exit doors at the plant were locked, preventing workers from escaping. In addition to the 25 who died, 54 workers were injured in the incident.
State workplace safety inspectors never visited the plant, but USDA inspectors were there every day, prompting officials to propose the cross-training and routine reporting program. But according to research by The Assembly, an online news site, there's no evidence that USDA has ever forwarded a written complaint involving worker safety anywhere in the nation to OSHA.
Price said the government cannot simply ignore the commitment it made, and he asked Vilsack and Walsh for a timeline on getting the program in place, what resources are needed to effect it and details on a possible renegotiation of the agreement between the two agencies.
"After 30 years, the deadly and entirely avoidable Hamlet fire remains deeply disturbing to myself and many North Carolinians," he wrote in the letter. "It is critical that the promise made by the federal government to better protect these workers during a period of intense reckoning is kept."