At a Texas Foundry, an Indifference to Life

YLER, Tex. It is said that only the desperate seek work at Tyler Pipe, a sprawling, rusting pipe foundry out on Route 69, just past the flea market. Behind a high metal fence lies a dim, dirty, hellishly hot place where men are regularly disfigured by amputations and burns, where turnover is so high that convicts are recruited from local prisons, where some workers urinate in their pants because their bosses refuse to let them step away from the manufacturing line for even a few moments.

Since 1995, at least 4,600 injuries have been recorded in McWane foundries, many hundreds of them serious ones, company documents show. Nine workers have been killed.

McWane plants, which employ about 5,000 workers, have been cited for more than 400 federal health and safety violations.

No McWane executive would be interviewed on the record. But in a series of written responses, the company's president, G. Ruffner Page, acknowledged "serious mistakes."

This story of Tyler Pipe is  drawn from company and government documents and interviews with dozens of current and former workers and managers.

Federal safety inspectors have tried to make a difference. They cited and fined and cajoled. But for years, records show, little has changed.

A Broken Back

Marcos Lopez crossed the Mexican border and found work at Tyler Pipe at the age of 17. He was used to tough work, and he saw plenty of men get hurt. But nothing on earth, he said, prepared him for McWane’s ownership of the workplace.

"You reach this point that you just don't care about you," said Lopez, who is now 45. "And you set your mind on work. And that's what they want. And that's how people get hurt."

On March 2, 2002, it happened to him. He was working on some machinery, stretching awkwardly in a tight space, when he slipped and fell. His back slammed into metal. He heard a snap, he said, and felt dizzying waves of pain and nausea. He was pale and weeping and showing signs of shock. He said his pain - a "burning in the bone" - was so intense that it was a challenge to breathe.

Had he been sent to a hospital, had an X-ray been done, it would have been clear that Lopez had suffered a terrible injury, a severe compression fracture in his spine.

But he was not sent to a hospital. Michelle Sankowsky, a nurse who was hired in January 2002 as Tyler Pipe's occupational health and compensation manager, was in the dispensary that day. She recalls that senior safety managers were deeply suspicious of Lopez. He had a prior back injury, in 2000. Worse still, he had "jumped ship" and been kept off work for months.

Lopez was sent by van to the Occu-Safe clinic where, after a brief examination, he was given pain medicine and sent home. The clinic doctor diagnosed a back strain and told the plant to expect Lopez back in three days. In fact, he was getting worse. He felt a creeping numbness in his legs and hands.

On his third visit to Occu-Safe, Lopez asked for an X-ray. It showed a "bad compression fracture." Still, he was sent home. Nobody informed him of the new findings, he said, and according to Sankowsky, this was deliberate.

"Why do you not tell this gentleman that he's got a compression fracture of the spine?" she said she asked an Occu-Safe manager. "And he said to me, `Well, then he'd know how hurt he was.' "

Finally, more than three weeks after his fall, Lopez was sent to a surgeon. "He said, `You're one hair to be paralyzed for the rest of your life,' " Lopez recalled. The doctor told him something else: his fracture had gotten worse since the accident.

For months after his back surgery, Lopez said, he could not dress himself, or pick up the soap in the shower.

"I feel destroyed," he said.

The Foundry

The pipe foundry occupies several hundred acres northwest of downtown. Its smokestacks rise high above a north and south plant, each with its own cupola, a multistory furnace that melts tons of scrap metal to produce smoky white rivers of molten iron, measuring about 2800 degrees. The molten iron is poured into spinning cylinders to form pipes, into molds of packed black sand to make fittings.

The company would not let a reporter tour the plant. But employees describe simply stepping inside as an overwhelming experience. First is the heat, wave upon wave of it, sometimes in excess of 130 degrees. Then there is the noise - of pipe slamming into pipe, of pneumatic tools that grind and cut, of massive machines that shudder and shake, of honking forklifts and roaring exhaust systems. Dust and fumes choke the lungs and coat the lights, leaving the plant floor a spectral labyrinth of glowing pipes and blackened machinery.

In 1999, inspectors from the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration spent several days inspecting the foundry. They found more than 150 safety hazards. They found poorly maintained equipment. They found a work force that was poorly trained, ill equipped, overworked.

"Throughout the plant, molten metal is seen spilling from the cupolas, bulls and ladles," their report said. "The forklift trucks transport the metal, and the ground behind the trucks often smokes with puddles of molten metal. Workers are covered with black residue from the foundry sand. Many work areas are dark, due to poor lighting and clouds of sand. Despite all the ignition and fuel sources, exit paths are not obvious. Many workers have scars or disfigurations which are noticeable from several feet away.”

Epilogue

In the summer of last year, the company pleaded guilty in federal court to deliberately ignoring safety rules that could have saved employee lives. However, Tyler Pipe remains a dangerous place to work. A recently completed internal safety audit found 1,219 hazards.