BY KAREN RAY
LAWRENCE, Massachusetts-"Everyone knew it was a time bomb waiting to go off." This is how Pedro Bares, a production worker from the apparel division, described the fire that consumed the Malden Mills textile plant in nearby Methuen December 11. The four main mill buildings, over a century old, were razed. Thirty workers were hospitalized with serious injuries, a dozen of whom were in critical condition one week after the blaze.
The fire burned for over eight days, producing streams of acrid smoke that could be seen as far away as Merrimac to the east, and reaching such intense temperatures that firefighters described flames shooting 50 feet horizontally from the buildings and 150 feet into the sky. "It was like standing at the gates of hell," Methuen fire chief Kenneth Bourassa told the local newspaper.
In the end 2,400 people were left jobless, 1,400 of them members of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE). The plant had a full production shift of 700 working at the time of the fire.
Moreno Báez, a union worker from the woven division, had left work an hour before the explosion. He got a call from a friend and went to offer help to fellow workers. Within 15 minutes, he said, the fire spread to all four production buildings. "You could hear explosions all night long," Báez stated, as propane gas tanks and chemicals continued to burn.
The fire began in the flock division, where a synthetic upholstery fabric was produced. Workers report that a boiler, used in the production of the material, exploded. This was the same area where a similar explosion in 1993 left six workers hospitalized from burns and smoke inhalation. Nothing had been changed in the way production was organized after that incident. Malden Mills has been inspected by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) 13 times since 1980. Five of the investigations resulted in $38,000 in fines.
"Working in flock is like working in the mines. You felt like you were in a cave when you were in there." This is how Báez described the conditions. "Just this spring three people in less than six months died of heart attacks in flock," he said. Fabric was produced there by using a chemical with heat and electromagnetic process to glue tiny fiber particles to a cloth backing.
Workers tell the truth
While the company and owner Aaron Feuerstein are being
painted as heroes in the media for their "compassion"
following the fire, workers from the mill described what
they saw happen.
"My friend Mario was working in one of the buildings when the explosion happened," said Báez. "He told me his supervisor wouldn't let anyone leave the building when the alarms went off - even though the fumes were coming in and tears were in people's eyes. She told them to keep working, the fire was in another building."
Julio Soto, a worker from the flock division, described carrying a co-worker out and asking him who he was, only to learn it was Jerry, with whom he had worked for over four years in the mill. "We put the bodies in the guard shack and then ran in for more. It was co-workers who ensured that everyone was accounted for."
"Aaron Feuerstein is being portrayed as a hero in the newspapers. But we have had safety problems for a long time. We knew something like this would happen - it was just a matter of time," explained Willie Sanabria, who was working in flock at the time of the explosion.
The much-publicized "heroic deeds" of the company amount to no more than the promise of paying 30 days' wages and a pledge to rebuild the mill.
Politicians rolled in for a day to shine in the spotlight with pledges to get state and federal aid for the company. "If there's one employer we are not going to let fail, it's this one," said Massachusetts governor William Weld. Senators Edward Kennedy and John Kerry showed up the day after the explosion.
A December 16 Boston Globe editorial, titled "Methuen's good fortune," cooed, "The truth is that as a group, the employees of Malden Mills are lucky, not unlucky. It is the thousands of workers whose employers, current and erstwhile, do not possess the foresight and social courage of an Aaron Feuerstein who need our support."
Large donations have poured into the company. The biggest one is $100,000 from UNITE. The second, for $50,000, is from the Bank of Boston. The only meetings called so far after the fire have been organized by the company. Some 80 people were evacuated from their homes following the fire. Area residents were allowed back after the Environmental Protection Agency completed air and water tests for cyanide, chlorine gas, carbon monoxide, hydrogen sulfide benzene toluene, solvents, and other chemicals used in production.
"It is because of the working-class neighborhood that surrounds the plant that they say it's OK to go back to the houses," Báez stated. "These are working people who are mostly immigrants. They don't know they can raise their voice." Lawrence is a city of immigrant workers, many from the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, and faces one of the highest unemployment rates in the state, officially 10 percent.
On December 15 Feuerstein announced at a meeting at a local high school that he would keep paying workers their wages for 30 days and everyone would get their $275 "Christmas bonus." Never mind that this bonus was owed to workers who accepted a contract 10 days earlier in lieu of a raise for 1996. Representatives from the union stood with Feuerstein applauding the promise of reopening and saying nothing about the ongoing safety problems workers have faced for years.
Báez stated, "There is a cover-up going on. Safety is the issue, not only jobs."
Karen Ray worked at Malden Mills for three years.