© Image from bumblebee.com
Los Angeles prosecutors charged Bumble Bee Foods and two managers on Monday with violating safety regulations when a worker was cooked to death in an industrial oven with 12,000 pounds of tuna.
Both managers could face serve jail sentences and the company could be charged with a maximum fine of $1.5 million.
Jose Melena, 62, was performing maintenance work in 35-foot-long industrial oven at Bumble Bee's Santa Fe Springs plant in October 2012 when a co-worker, thinking Melena was on a bathroom break, filled the pressure cooker with thousands of pounds of canned tuna and turned it on.
According to a report by the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health (OSHA), Melena's supervisor then noticed he was missing. A search was conducted in the plant and parking lot before his body was found two hours later - after the oven reached a temperature of 270 degrees Fahrenheit.
Prosecutors charged the company and two managers each with three counts of violating OSHA rules: The violation of a safety plan, the violation of rules for workers entering confined spaces and the violation of safety procedures that ensure machinery and equipment are turned off when a worker is conducting cleaning or maintenance
The two managers could face up to three years in prison and fines of up to $250,000 if convicted of all charges. The company faces a maximum fine of $1.5 million.
Comment: Have our children become products to be inspected, stamped, dated and sold to the highest funder? Can we see the pathological handprint here? Let's create robot worker children who esteem to claw their way to the top without an original thought or creative promise. By the book. By the numbers. Can we surmise that any emotional variance will be punished out and any selfish manipulation will bring praise and reward? And, we will wake up one morning and not know or recognize our kids. They will be the manifestation of a cold and heartless system.