Early in the morning on Oct. 11, 2012, Jose Melena was doing routine maintenance on a 35-foot long oven-like pressure cooker at the Bumble Bee Foods plant in Santa Fe Springs, in southeast Los Angeles County.
Melena’s co-worker thought he was in the bathroom and loaded the pressure cooker with 12,000 pounds of canned tuna, and then turned it on. Temperatures reached 132 degrees Celsius (270 degrees F.) during the two hours needed to cook and sterilize the tuna.
A supervisor noticed Melena was missing and got on the intercom, asking employees to help in locating the missing man. Employees searched the entire facility and parking lot, according to a report filed by the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health, as reported by NBC News. Melena was found dead two hours later after the pressure cooker was turned off and opened.
Bumble Bee Foods, along with two employees, plant Operations Director Angel Rodriguez and former safety manager Saul Florez were each charged with three counts of violating Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) rules that caused a death.
According to CBS Sacramento, the charges against the company and the two managers say they “willfully violated rules that require implementing a safety plan, rules for workers entering confined spaces, and a procedure to keep machinery or equipment turned off if someone’s working on it.”
Operations director Rodriguez, age 62 of Riverside, and Florez, age 42 of Whittier, could face up to three years in prison, along with fines of up to $250,000 if convicted of all charges. Bumble Bee Foods is facing a maximum fine of up to $1.5 million. Prosecution of workplace violations are not that common in the United States, even when a fatality occurs.
