Unions representing DuPont and Chemours employees have threatened to pursue regulatory actions against the companies, saying their safety experts have been barred from reviewing plant conditions throughout the country.
In a letter to the CEOs of both companies, the United Steelworkers and International Chemical Workers Union Council say DuPont refused to allow health and safety experts to correct “hazardous conditions” at its plants.
According to the letter, DuPont only granted union safety experts access to its plants after an order from the National Labor Relations Board and those facilities were not even inspected by the experts until one year after the initial request.
The USW represents about 1,000 DuPont and Chemours workers across the country, including at Chemours’ Edge Moor pigmentation plant in east Wilmington. The ICWUC is the union for a combined 400 workers at Chemours’ Parlin, New Jersey, facility and DuPont’s La Porte, Texas, plant.
USW International President Leo W. Gerard and ICWUC International President Frank Cyphers authored the letter. The two union heads threatened to file complaints with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the National Labor Relations Board.
“Our unions have the right and the moral responsibility to represent our members on matters of safety and health,” Gerard and Cyphers wrote. “We would greatly prefer to exercise that right and responsibility through a collaborative relationship with DuPont and Chemours at the corporate and plant levels, rather than through OSHA and NLRB charges. We are confident that a close and mutually respectful relationship can improve safety far more effectively.”
Dan Turner, a DuPont spokesman, said the company is actively working with local union members to address safety concerns at its locations. He said DuPont is creating a training process in conjunction with the union to improve safety at the La Porte plant.
“DuPont has worked with local and national unions for many years with positive results and we will continue to engage in constructive dialogue with them at our individual sites,” Turner said.
Chemours spokesman Robert Dekker said the company, which was split from DuPont on July 1, has made safety one a top priority. Dekker said all unions at Chemours’ sites are involved in safety processes.
“Chemours has a fundamental belief that we simply must have excellent process safety management and safety performance – this is never an option,” he said. “As a new company with safety obsession as one of our values, Chemours understands that the safety expectations of our company, our employees, our customers and our communities are high and we intend to exceed those expectations.
In November, four employees were killed at the La Porte plant after they were overwhelmed by methyl mercaptan, a toxic gas used to make jet fuel and insecticides. A worker was killed and another was seriously injured by an explosion at its Yerkes plant near Buffalo. An additional workplace fatality occurred in 2010 when an employee at DuPont’s Belle, West Virginia, plant died after exposure to phosgene gas.
Last month, OSHA placed DuPont into a program for “severe” violators of federal workplace safety standards after a second inspection of the La Porte plant. DuPont is the largest company among the roughly 450 businesses in the program. OSHA inspections at the plant found 19 safety violations, which resulted in $372,000 in fines.
DuPont’s Darrow, Louisiana, and Deepwater, New Jersey, facilities also received OSHA citations for “similar process safety management violations.”
Michael Wright, director of Health Safety and Environment for USW, said the union’s next step depends on how Chemours and DuPont respond to the letter. He told The News Journal his union’s goal to establish plant visits during production times and discuss how safety is managed by both companies.
“We would like to sit down with representatives at whatever level they allow,” he said. “It could be with the CEOs and presidents, but more likely it will be with the heads of their safety departments.”
Wright cautioned it is too soon to speculate when or if the unions will raise complaints with either OSHA or NLRB.
“We will have to see how they respond,” he said.