What a grotesque, tragic story. As I never tire of pointing out, unions aren't just about wages and benefits, they're about workplace regulations, and safety codes, and making sure earning a salary doesn't mean watching your lungs get shredded by diacetyl, the artificial flavoring used in butter. But the story of this worker, who's now incapacitated by popcorn lung, contracted through his job bagging cheese and popcorn flavorings, has one of the cruelest twists imaginable:
As much as he hates to do it, the man who collapsed while playing basketball will report to work until he can figure out another way to support himself and his three children, he said.
He will continue pouring, mixing and bagging flavors that, when ventilated through a fan in the roof, turn the snow outside the plant yellow and orange in the winter, he said.
With no bachelor's degree and little professional experience, he fears he won't be able to match the roughly $18 an hour he earns at the flavor plant. Plus, he said he needs the medical benefits now more than ever.
"There are a lot of reasons I can't just walk away from this job," he said.
"So what kind of a country is this," Jordon Barab asks, "that even knowing that exposre to a chemical can cause death, will allow people to continue working with it. And what kind of a country is this where a sick man seems to have no choice but to continue being exposed to a chemical he knows is killing him?" What kind of country indeed?
