Workers allege “blatant indifference” to Kentucky candle factory lawsuit

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A lawsuit filed Wednesday alleges that a Kentucky candle company displayed “blatant indifference” during the devastating tornadoes of the past week.

After the deaths of eight workers, surviving employees of Mayfield Consumer Products said in their lawsuit the company violated occupational safety and health standards by not allowing employees to leave work early in the day. approaching storm, according to the Associated Press.

More specifically, the lawsuit alleges that the company had “up to three and a half hours before the tornado reached its place of activity to allow its employees to leave its site as a safety measure”, but instead did evidence of “blatant disregard for the rights” of employees who were at risk, the AP reported.

“This is one of those cases which speaks for itself,” Amos Jones, an attorney representing the employees, told The Hill, adding that “the trial is very straightforward.”

“Our investigation indicates from what those trapped saw that the toll of this site is necessarily greater than eight,” he added, noting that “a large number of people” who were perhaps working on up but were technically employed by another company “could plausibly not count towards the MCP’s death toll.”

“We are still investigating and will continue to investigate as people come forward and give us more and more information,” Jones added.

Company spokesperson Bob Ferguson previously said employees were free to return home at any time and said they would not have suffered any consequences for doing so, and CEO Troy Propes has said “a team of independent experts” was reviewing the actions managers and employees took during the storm, according to the AP.

“We are convinced that our team leaders acted very appropriately and were, in fact, heroic in their efforts to protect our employees,” added Propes. “We are hearing testimony from a few employees that our procedures were not followed. We are going to do a thorough review of what happened.

In the aftermath of the deadly storm, many feared workers without telephone service were missing. Since then, all of the company’s employees have been located and Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) announced that the state’s workplace safety agency would investigate the eight deaths at the scene, noted the AP.

– Update at 4:04 p.m.

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