The smell of mold hit James “Lucky” Dugan the moment he walked into the plant.
Last fall, Dugan was one of thousands of union construction workers to arrive in small-town Glendale, Kentucky, to build a vast factory for Ford and SK On, a South Korean company. The plant, when completed, will make batteries for nearly a million electric pickup trucks each year.
When Dugan walked in, huge wooden boxes containing battery-making machines, largely shipped from overseas, were laid across the mile-long factory floor. Black streaks on those wooden boxes, plus the smell, immediately raised alarm bells for workers. But for months, those concerns were met with little remedy from the contractors hired by BlueOval to oversee construction.
That’s awful if true. Factories should pay particular attention to cleanliness precisely because they’re so prone to issues like this.
Shame on Ford for not making safety and cleanliness a top priority.
A lot of factories, particularly in Florida, are open air because they don’t want to pay for air conditioning, which just makes the situation worse.
Of course that’s not the only issue with factory work. Between “mandatory overtime” that doesn’t get announced until minutes before the end of your 15 hour shift and getting written up even with a doctor’s note… Or even paying for medical insurance and simply not being able to use it… Very few people want to work in a factory setting. The ones that do have to just to survive.
It’s modern day slavery, they just don’t beat you anymore.