I just read Phil Wells's story of two weeks ago on the plant closing due to cost of making it safer to operate. I work in a mill in western Canada. About 15 years ago, we had some people from Dupont come up and give us training on inspections for safety hazards. The climax of the one-week course was an actual inspection. The trainer chose an area of the plant that was supposed to be a real nightmare.

Sure enough, they found more than 100 safety problems there. The trainer said that if the rest of the plant was like this, he'd quit before he got injured or killed. He also said that he wouldn't leave our area until after he had personally spoken with the Mill Manager and Safety Director. They had the meeting but nothing got done.

Within three months, a worker was killed in the area. They fired the mill manager and we embarked on a safety crusade that lasted at least 10 years. The goal was world class safety. We made the Mill a lot safer, we won an award for safety, but it was also downsized to less than 500 employees (from 1,700). And in the past three years, I'm sorry to say that the new shareholders have chosen to basically stop walking the safety walk like we had been before.

Fortunately for us, we were trained to believe that no matter who took us over we would never again be willing to accept the poor working conditions of before, nor put ourselves at risk. Of course, some risk exists in any industry. But it's up to each of us to recognize hazards and eliminate or reduce our exposure to them as much as possible. We're still operating, staffing levels continue to fall and concerns about whether the mill will keep operating grow.

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