Dispatches From the Front Lines of the Battle for Workplace Safety: Short Stuff

Captives on the Kill Line: Hiring immigrant workers — even undocumented workers — can be a headache. They get rounded up in immigration raids, move away or move on to better-paid jobs. A much better and more profitable bet are prisoners on work-release. The Southern Poverty Law Center tells the story of one worker, Frank Dwayne Ellington, who was dragged into a machine he was cleaning — even though it was still operating — and crushed to death. But hiring work-release prisoner is profitable for employer and the state: “The Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) continues to send hundreds of prisoners to work for private companies, generating nearly $11 million a year for the perennially underfunded agency” For prisoners, the plants may be safer than prison conditions and a work release program can help a prisoner show a parole board that he or she has been rehabilitated. But they can’t move away or look for a better job. And if they complain about being in pain, or get injured, it’s back to prison for the captive workforce.

The Kill Line

July 26, 2018 Will Tucker

Should prisons be in business with one of the most dangerous industries in America?

Frank Dwayne Ellington set out toward Ashland, Alabama, on Oct. 29, 2017, headed to the only place he could go: to work. He rode through a region bounded by the Talladega National Forest to the north and Lake Martin to the south. It’s an area like many others in rural Alabama, where a poultry plant is one of the largest employers for miles. ... His destination was a spot near the Kill Line at Koch Foods of Ashland’s poultry plant, where machines slaughter thousands of chickens every day.

It was Sunday, which meant the plant was operating with a skeleton crew. Ellington and five others – all fellow prisoners in a work release program – arrived at the factory to join them. His job was to clean the plant on the sanitation shift. In the late afternoon, Ellington approached a machine called an Automatic Rehanger with his rag and bucket. On other shifts, the machine transfers chicken carcasses from one stage of processing to another. ... The machine was running, but Ellington began to clean it anyway.

At 4:15 p.m., he made a right angle with his left arm and reached into the machine to scrub it down. His arm was close to a rotating toothed disc called a sunflower wheel. Too close. In an instant, the wheel’s teeth gashed into his forearm and caught on. Ellington screamed. The machine pulled him into its maw of stainless steel. He died immediately.

Shortly after, two local police officers showed up to survey the scene. Their photos show Ellington’s body draped backwards over dull grey metal. He was wearing a white protective jacket and jeans. One of his blue-gloved hands was limp by his side, the other above his head, caught on the sunflower wheel. His feet were together, the heels of his black boots several inches from the ground. The machine had crushed the back left side of his skull. His bucket lay beside him, tipped over, near pools of his blood.
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Meanwhile, nothing appears to have changed within the work release program that placed Ellington in the poultry plant. The Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) continues to send hundreds of prisoners to work for private companies, generating nearly $11 million a year for the perennially underfunded agency.
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