Didion Milling Inc. of Cambria, Wisconsin experienced a corn mill explosion in 2017 that cost five employees their lives and wounded several others. Just last week, the owners of Didion were found guilty of forged certificates of compliance with the Clean Air Act and for hindering the Occupational Safety and Health Administration in its investigation of the explosion.
Officials in the company had also violated OSHA’s requirement for grain milling factories to develop programs to control the levels of combustible grain dust. Additionally, they refused to purchase and install the preventative equipment required by OSHA, finding it cheaper to pay the fines, instead. It was this negligence toward worker safety and explosion prevention that cost several Didion employees their livelihoods in 2017.
This is not an isolated event of employers’ negligence to ensure workplace safety. In 2023 alone, Wisconsin lost the lives of a 16-year-old sawmill worker in Florence County and an 8-year-old Nicaraguan immigrant working in a dairy farm in Dane County.
The Florence County incident was a result of the company’s illegal employment of children under 18 in the sawmill’s hazardous working conditions. Republican legislators may be partially responsible for the recent increase in the employment of minors. With worker shortages earlier this year, Republican lawmakers worked to roll back labor laws that regulated the employment of minors, causing concerns among child welfare advocates. For...
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