Price Of Neglect

EVEN IN THE BEST OF TIMES, IT WASN'T THE BEST OF jobs. Chopping and cooking chicken parts for Imperial Food Products was monotonous, relentless work, but , the company's largely black and female employees in Hamlet, North Carolina, were grateful for it -- until that awful day last year when a hydraulic line that ran the conveyor belt ruptured and sprayed flammable fluid that ignited, incinerating 25 employees. Horror swiftly turned to outrage when it was learned that the high death count was the result of illegally locked plant doors and the absence of a sprinkler system.

Last week Imperial owner Emmett Roe, 65, was sentenced to 19 years 11 months in jail as part of a plea bargain that let his son Brad, the plant's operations manager, get off scot-free. Relatives of the dead were outraged, yet the owner's punishment was unusually strong for fire violations. "I can understand the pain of the community, but this is by far the stiffest sentence that I'm aware of for a worker-safety criminal charge," says Douglas Fuller, a spokesman for the Labor Department. That message will probably spread among plant managers around the country.