Factory probed
Candle workers say they faced ax if they left
Kentucky’s workplace safety agency is set to investigate the deaths of eight people killed at a candle factory leveled after a series of tornadoes ripped across the state and several others last week.
Gov. Andy Beshear on Tuesday said the Kentucky Division of Occupational Safety and Health Compliance would undertake a months-long review of the deaths, a typical step taken after workers are killed on the job. His announcement comes following complaints from workers at the Mayfield Consumer Products factory, who were reportedly told they would be fired if they chose to flee from the severe weather before the end of their shifts.
The governor, a Democrat, noted the probe does not inherently “suggest that there was any wrongdoing. But what it should give people confidence in, is that we’ll get to the bottom of what happened.”
At least five workers at the factory in Mayfield told NBC News that their supervisors denied them permission to go home as severe weather bore down on Kentucky Friday evening. In the hours before the twisters struck, workers allegedly begged to leave but were repeatedly rebuffed — despite the whipping winds and blaring of emergency sirens just outside, they said.
While some employees ignored the warning and ended their shifts early, many, fearing repercussion, stayed that Friday night.
Elijah Johnson was working in the back of the building when he spotted several colleagues seeking out a supervisor, who they hoped would let them leave.
“I asked to leave and they told me I’d be fired,” Johnson told NBC. “Even with the weather like this, you’re still going to fire me?” he asked.
“Yes,” a manager responded, Johnson alleged.
The 20-year-old worker also noted that employers went as far as taking roll call several times throughout the night in a bid to catch anyone leaving early.
Another worker said the company failed to act on the storm warnings and keep workers informed of what was happening.
Haley Conder questioned why the company, Mayfield Consumer Products, did not encourage workers to go home — or fill them in better on the danger — between the first tornado siren around 6 p.m. Friday and another one around 9 p.m., shortly before the twister struck.
“They (the company) had from 6 o’clock to 9 o’clock to allow us to go home, to tell us really what was going on and that we needed to prepare ourselves for the worst,” she told Associated Press. “It was nothing like that. Not one supervisor told us what was really going on.”
A spokesman for the company and other workers pushed back on such reports.
Bob Ferguson, a spokesman for Mayfield Consumer Products, called the workers’ allegations “absolutely untrue.”
Kyanna Parsons-Perez, a worker at the Mayfield factory, told the Lexington Herald-Leader she never was told that her job was at risk if she went home.
And Jennifer Sanchez-Flores told the Herald-Leader that workers were allowed to leave, and that she took over the duties of a worker who decided to go after the storm warning came down.
By Saturday morning, the building was entirely reduced to rubble, sparking a massive search effort for those left trapped inside.
At least eight people died in the factory. Officials have said the company told them that all other workers have since been accounted for, though the search for those missing still continue in other places across the state.
Dozens more deaths have been confirmed across Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee and Illinois, where workers were similarly left trapped in an Amazon warehouse. At least six people were killed there.
The confirmed death toll was up to 88 on Tuesday.