Unsafe Work Kills

You may have heard about the paper mill in Longview, Washington that blew up and killed 11 workers. Longview is a classic Northwestern timber town, one that has actually mostly survived with a fair number of jobs. But the pressure of global capitalism falls entirely on the workers as companies are determined to lower prices as much as possible. So the companies kill workers and the workers have to take it because the option is a closed factory.

People in Longview, Wash., have been waiting for what feels like forever for something to go terribly wrong in one of the paper mills that line the Columbia River.

The plants that fuel the economy in southwest Washington came for the ample timber in the Pacific Northwest’s mountains, the cheap electricity powered by the region’s mighty rivers and the ocean access at the Columbia’s mouth. But they rely on technology that is dangerous, expensive to maintain and dependent on potentially toxic chemicals. They also belong to companies pressed to cut costs in response to rising prices and economic uncertainty in global markets.

So the tank failure at the Nippon Dynawave Packaging facility Tuesday that killed at least eight people and left another three missing and presumed dead saddened this community far more than it shocked people. Now they have a new worry — what will become of the plant and its 550 employees?

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Unlike many Pacific Northwest timber towns, Longview did not collapse when federal protections for the northern spotted owl sharply reduced logging on federal lands in the 1990s, accelerating timber’s decline. It somehow weathered economic globalization over the past decade that obliterated jobs and shuttered dozens of pulp and paper mills as production consolidated.

“What have we lost, seven mills across three states just last year?” Ms. Gluesenkamp Perez asked.

Instead, Longview evolved, embracing large-scale industrial work along the riverfront. Today, nearly one in five jobs in Cowlitz County is tied to manufacturing, and much of the work involves either turning Northwest logs into paper products or putting them on trains and boats.

That shift kept Longview economically viable, but it also brought risk. Competition has increased pressure to produce on tighter budgets. The remaining mills rely on huge machines and hazardous chemicals, including “white liquor,” a caustic mixture used to turn wood chips into paper pulp.

Workers at the Nippon Dynawave factory turned wood pulp into bleached liquid paperboard packaging, used in milk and juice cartons. The tank that ruptured Tuesday held 600,000 gallons of white liquor before the explosion and 25,000 gallons after the blast, according to rescue officials.

Some spilled into the Columbia River; some entered the nearby storm water drainage system — environmental regulators are not sure how much or where the rest went, though they have said there is no air quality risk and no risk to the local water supply. City crews are flushing the storm water system near the plant because of contamination.

“These companies, they’re like sleeping demons,” said Jeremy Whiton, who works in shipping at the North Pacific Paper Company plant just down Industrial Way from the Nippon Dynawave facility.

Mr. Whiton said he and his co-workers are “hardcore people” who understand the risks.

“But every day I go in and every day I leave, it’s a blessing,” he said.

This is the logic of contemporary capitalism. The only notable thing here is that the dead workers making your products are in the United States, not Bangladesh or China or Cambodia. Of course, we could do something about this and engage in a pro-regulatory politics, but the rhetoric of the free market and deregulation and the empowered consumers wins out above all. What’s 11 dead people when I can get cheap paper?