PLAYING WITH POISON

...Another woman agrees angrily...

...Most of them are young, in their twenties, and wear ironed jeans and bright blouses...

...Bill Pymm made some changes, and the ambient mercury levels fell...

...There are people out there dying all over the place," he says...

...In New York City, there are now only four industrial hygienists inspecting thousands of factories...

...He used to be a little bit chubby...

...Why is this person a former employee?' should be the first question you ask," he says, sounding as if he's instructing one more jury...

...Why should a garment worker's union be interested in you...

...That October, the Department took air samples and found that the firm had "permitted a serious mercury contamination to start again...

...During the 1970s, we used to do follow-up inspections on everyone," Richardson says...

...Sometimes, thermometers would break and Jimenez would clean up the glass and mercury with his hands, inhaling mercury vapors...

...Usually the floors are painted...

...The union needs new members to take their place and pay initiation fees and monthly dues...

...The classic symptoms of mercury poisoning include tremors, bleeding gums, 'It is the worst case of mercury poisoning in the work place in the last twenty years,' says one doctor who tested the workers...

...Two months later, the inspectors returned with a warrant and cited the company for a series of violations ranging from failing to provide proper ventilation to allowing workers to eat at mercury-contaminated benches...

...This job it clothe me and it pay my bills," one woman says as she yanks open the steel gray door...

...Within months, the agency cited Pymm for another sixteen violations...

...twenty-seven children of workers were tested, and five had mercury levels above normal...

...Tell them the truth," he said...

...Jose Jimenez, for instance, didn't see a doctor until the city health department inspected the factory in 1984...

...They find me a job at Pymm Thermometer," recalls Gonzales...

...If the salary is less than they would receive on welfare, their paychecks are supplemented by the Government...

...But OSHA's fundamental indifference persists...

...mercury is listed as the weapon...

...Richardson leans back in his chair and shrugs his shoulders...

...OSHA called back to say there had been "compliance" by Pymm...

...When the Department sent doctors to test the workers, they weren't allowed in...

...The foreman is called into Pymm's office...

...The Pymm brothers are charged with assault against Rodriquez...

...William Pymm, president of the family business, has known since the early 1970s that his employees were being contaminated with mercury, and so have government agencies...

...The supervisors came around and told the workers they could go to the hospital to receive further medical attention, but it would cost them $125 a person and the company wouldn't pay, recalls Carmen Gonzalez, who worked at Pymm for nine years...

...He and other workers are still amazed and angry that they were never given any kind of protective equipment...

...During lunch hour at Pymm Thermometer, the workers stroll down to the bodega to buy sandwiches and cigarettes...

...Joe Blount, an ILGWU organizer who used to talk to the employees on their lunch break at the corner bodega, says the women more than the men resisted the drive...

...Meanwhile, Pymm hired its own doctors to test the workers...

...Though WIN stopped sending women to the factory, it did not alert former clients still working at Pymm to the hazardous conditions...

...Then we don't know what happens to it," says Richardson...

...Because ain't nobody else gonna take care of me...

...By law, OSHA is prohibited from notifying factory owners of an impending inspection...

...In my office, we don't have the time for it, we don't have the staff for it...

...Thirty former Pymm employees, including Jose Jimenez, are suing the company and the city for knowingly endangering their health...

...The garment worker's union knows nothing about you and your jobs...

...If not for a reporter at The Guardian, OSHA might have gone on indefinitely granting Pymm extensions...

...The Department set up an appointment to investigate the factory and test all of its employees...

...The second bell announces the end of the lunch hour...

...They were scared to lose their job," says Carmen Gonzalez, a former Pymm employee...

...Three ladies died from there," says Gonzalez, relating in particular the story of Barbara Heath...

...Several months later, New York's Occupational Safety and Health Administration was closed down and all files were turned over to the Federal Government...

...Pete Richardson has been an OSHA inspector for nine years...

...No problem...

...For the next six years, no one from OSHA visited the Pymm thermometer factory...

...The Department urged the state to take administrative action against the plant...

...He loves his job but hates what the Reagan Administration has done to OSHA...

...Jose Jimenez and his co-workers at Pymm know these symptoms well...

...Gonzalez asked around and found out Barbara was hospitalized with kidney problems...

...I don't know," he laughs...

...At first, Pymm appeared eager to ensure a healthy environment...

...Cigarettes are picked up with unwashed hands from ash trays and kept on the workers' benches...

...Like Jimenez, many do not speak English...

...It is unclear what OSHA was talking about...

...K.D...

...This law here, it's the greatest law that ever was made for the working man, right here," he says, thumping one finger down on a copy of the Occupational Safety and Health Act...

...Nationwide, the number of inspections in response to complaints has been cut in half since 1980, citations have dwindled, a cap has been placed on all fines for violations, and OSHA now routinely takes the employers' word that they have corrected the problem...

...getful...

...They both left Pymm because they became too sick to work, and they both know the workers who died and claim it was the mercury that killed them...

...We've gone well beyond what the law requires in ensuring the safety and health and welfare of its employees...

...Her manager, Joe Levy, sitting in on the interview, interjected...

...They thought "they would go back to the WIN program and get no help...

...According to the indictment, Rodriquez suffered serious physical injury while operating a machine that crushed broken thermometers and recovered the mercury...

...It is the worst case of mercury poisoning in the work place that we are aware of in the last twenty years in the United States," says Dr...

...It's a thermometer factory...

...That's a city hospital...

...One young man says the Health Department has been to the factory many times and "they have okayed it...

...More than half of the workers were seriously contaminated with mercury, the New York City health department found in the fall of 1984...

...We don't have any facilities or means...

...Rodriquez allegedly performed this work for eleven months in a secret mercury-recovery operation in a cellar area with no windows...

...I said, 'Girls, don't be stupid...

...Barbara used to eat with her hands full of mercury all the time...

...Yet Jose Jimenez and Carmen Gonzalez tell depressingly similar stories...

...But the ILGWU recently abandoned its effort to organize Pymm workers...

...He be laughing like a little kid...

...The young workers are often fasated by, and play with, the 'quicksilver' globules that are spilled on their work benches...

...When he comes out, he tells the workers to clean up...

...When Weingard was asked about this, she hesitated...

...And the two of them disappear inside the factory...

...Some of them, like Carmen Gonzalez, found their jobs at Pymm through the state Department of Labor's Work Incentive (WIN) program...

...If the Pymm brothers are convicted, it will be only the second time that corporate executives have been held personally responsible in this country for endangering the lives of their workers...

...They may be forA Hazardous Shop Is a Non-Union Shop For all the health hazards at Pymm Thermometer, unions have not succeeded in organizing the work force...

...Pymm is a very nice person and he hire a lot of people from the WIN program.'" WIN continued to be a source of labor for Pymm until 1985, when the job counselors read about the factory in the newspapers...

...People are responsible for themselves...

...One of the last memos in the state agency's file describes the Pymm work place: "Since there is no intrinsic interest in the work, monotony predisposes to almost incessant smoking by most of the workers...

...But law or no law, Pymm workers say they often know when the inspectors are going to show up...

...When WIN counselors saw the newspaper stories, they called OSHA and the agency admitted that Pymm was under investigation, says Diane Weingard, an employment-service representative at one of WIN's Brooklyn offices...

...OSHA had never notified WIN about the numerous violations it had found at Pymm...

...Now the application of it, that's a different story...

...Tell them to bill you and don't pay.'" About 80 per cent of the Pymm employees are women...

...The women walk in twos and threes...

...We know it...

...So in the beginning they wouldn't go...

...She was small, but she started getting really small," Gonzalez says in a high, half-cracked voice...

...I am convinced of the innocence, total, of Pymm," Atlas says...

...He called the New York State Department of Labor, which found high levels of the metal in Pymm's urine...

...But what about the Pymm workers' accusations...

...As he speaks, an employee walks past him on his way to lunch, still wearing his mercury-contaminated apron...

...He asked the state Department of Health how to make the new plant safe, and the Department responded with a series of recommendations...

...Some were bringing the mercury home on their clothes and shoes...

...Some of the lines in the letter Bill Pymm posted at his plant seem to come from Lewis and Krupman's book, Winning NLRB Elections: Management's Strategy and Preventive Programs...

...Like that...

...Barbara used to work in the ovens and the thermometers would break a lot," Gonzalez recalls...

...The International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) came close in 1976, but then Pymm fired thirty to forty of the employees sympathetic to the union, the ILGWU says...

...Money...

...We was going down to lunch and I said, 'Barbara, what's wrong with you?' She said, 'Nothing's wrong with me,' but I was looking at her hands and her hands were shaking...

...Mercury affects the kidneys and the central nervous system...

...They are however a union that is losing members day by day...

...He began to get sick...

...After his doctor found high levels of mercury in his blood, the doctor called the New York City Health Department...

...I say, 'Barbara, you losing too much weight.' One week later, I didn't see her no more...

...Finally, in the spring of 1981, OSHA inspectors went to the factory, but Pymm wouldn't let them in...

...The findings were alarming...

...Nobody does it now...

...before that time, Jimenez had no idea he was handling a dangerous substance...

...When confronted with the allegations from former employees about the unsafe work place, Atlas shrugged...

...It's a job, Miss...

...Vidal Rodriquez suffered permanent brain damage from mercury poisoning at the plant, the indictment states...

...Medical reports on the Pymm workers sat in unopened files, even as the employees continued to work in the toxic environment...

...After a month in the hospital, she died...

...Most of the time, he worked the night shift, pushing thermometers in and out of ovens...

...Our memories are notoriously faulty...

...Anthony Atlas, the Pymm lawyer, says the indictments were politically inspired...

...Since 1977, recipients of Aid to Families with Dependent Children have been required to register with WIN and 'When we go out in the field, we bring back our data, our reports, our inspection...

...The executives are also charged with conspiracy for hiding the existence of the cellar room from Federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) inspectors and subsequently denying it was there...

...Workers at Pymm generally start at $3.35 an hour...

...If anybody called, we'd be glad to give them the information...

...Amy Goodman is the host of "Speaking for Ourselves, " a women's show on WNYC/New York Public Radio, and a co-anchor of WBAI/Pacifica Evening News...

...And his appetite, he doesn't hardly eat...

...Jimenez would work at Pymm for ten more years, his mercury count doubling, before he was retested and told he had the highest mercury count of any of the Pymm workers examined...

...Pymm's prime concern is the health and welfare of its employees...

...But the Pymm case is more than just another grisly tale of corporate crime...

...This frustrates Richardson...

...Many workers have never even gone to a doctor...

...Brothers and sisters, there is a health hazard in the confines of the company in which you work, was the black headline on the union's literature...

...Andrew Goodman, who tested the workers...

...Throughout the summer of 1974, industrial hygienists visited the plant only to find little or no compliance with the recommendations...

...In 1970, he was worried that he and two of his employees had been overexposed to mercury...

...For thirteen years, Jose Jimenez was employed at the Pymm factory in Brooklyn, which manufactures clinical mercury thermometers...

...The reports noted, for instance, that Jose Jimenez had hazardous levels of mercury in his body in 1974...

...and A.G...

...Up until 1986, New York City employers who hired WIN clients won tax breaks...

...Prosecutors have been known to initiate grand-jury investigations for a whole host of reasons and with a great deal of frequency for purposes of publicity," he says...

...it illustrates how the government—at all levels, and especially during the Reagan Administration—systematically neglects to enforce the laws designed to ensure safe work places...

...And in October, a New York grand jury indicted William and Edward Pymm, the brothers who run the company, and a foreman on charges of assault for allegedly endangering the lives of workers by knowingly and continually exposing them to mercury...

...Then, in 1984, Vidal Rodriquez broke his arm...

...The recommendations seem to have gone unheeded, however...

...Pymm provides significant employment at significant wages to people in the ghetto who would otherwise be unemployed," says Anthony Atlas, one of Pymm's attorneys...

...When asked if an inspector ever tells an employer in advance, Richardson becomes angry...

...Pymm's knowledge came firsthand...

...Those who live in the same housing projects travel to and from work together...

...PLAYING WITH POISON BY KATHY DOBIE AND AMY GOODMAN In a Brooklyn factory, deadly mercury takes its toll Kathy Dobie is a free-lance journalist who teaches writing at the Borough of Manhattan Community College...

...The doctors were forced to distribute urine containers to the workers at Woodhull Hospital across the street and collect them the next morning outside the factory doors...

...Most of the women and men working at Pymm today know little about the OSHA violations or the private lawsuits of former employees...

...take a job, except those with children under the age of five...

...dizziness, hair and weight loss, nausea, fatigue, and depression...

...Every year for the next three years, OSHA granted Pymm extensions on complying with the health and safety recommendations...

...Then, in the spring of 1974, he moved operations down the street to the current location, a two-story garage building on Park Avenue...

...Pymm's law firm of Jackson, Lewis, Schnitzler, and Krupman is known nationally for conducting anti-union seminars and publishing Advanced Management Research's AMR Reporter, which records "Trends and Strategies in Maintaining Non-Union Status...

...When New York State Attorney General Robert Abrams announced the criminal investigation of Pymm in March 1985, he criticized OSHA "for permitting extremely dangerous conditions to go uncorrected for almost four years...

...Absolutely not...

...When we go out in the field, we bring back our data, our reports, our inspection...

...Pymm Thermometer employs between eighty and 100 people, most of them black or Hispanic...

...If you take six people and show them the same accident, you get six different stories...

...Thirty former Pymm employees are charging in a suit against the city that it knew or should have known that the work place was hazardous and that it is liable for assigning people to such a work place...

...it found the workers were being exposed to excessive concentrations of mercury and told the owners how to decontaminate the plant...

...The first time was in 1985, when the president and two other officers of Film Recovery Systems, Inc., were convicted of manslaughter after a worker died from inhaling cyanide fumes in their factory...

...More than half of the workers had hazardous levels of mercury in their bodies...

...Jonathan Bennett published a series of articles on the factory and wrote a letter to Abrams and the Brooklyn district attorney detailing the citations and OSH A's lack of enforcement With the heat on, OSHA launched an internal audit and transferred area administrators out of the Manhattan office...

...The lady say, 'Oh, I got a job for you...

...Pymm has used more sophisticated tactics as well...

...And within the week, the inspectors appear...

...His legs were fat, and now they're too skinny...

...Atlas denies any wrongdoing on the part of his client...

...I'd get fired if that happens...

...Former employees may have reasons for saying what they say...

...Anything's possible...

...Some buy Tylenol for the headaches they get as the day drags on...

...That was like to discourage us not to go," she says...

...He always has his feet cold, cold, you know, like when somebody dies...

...Many of the women found employment at Pymm through the government's Work Incentive program (WIN) and worried that a strike would jeopardize not only their Pymm job but any future chance at obtaining WIN assistance and collecting welfare...

...The ILGWU tried to break through by highlighting the unsafe working conditions...

...In May 1985, William Pymm posted a letter written in English and Spanish to his employees...

...They receive no medical coverage...

...The results, which were lower than those found by the city, were printed without explanation on the stubs of the workers' paychecks...

...I mean, you have no choice," she says...

...Then we don't know what happens to it/ complains one OSHA inspector...

...He be laying down thinking and thinking and all of a sudden he go crazy," says his nineteen-year-old daughter, Maritsa...

...No locker facilities are provided for changing from street to work clothes, nor is there any official issue of work clothing, protective aprons, or overshoes...