What is the price of a worker’s life in 21st century America? Not much, in the eyes of the corporate elite and their political representatives.
Global heavy equipment maker Caterpillar, Inc. willfully ignored basic safety measures that could have prevented the death of 39-year-old worker Steven Dierkes in June, according to a report released Wednesday by the US Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).
On June 2, Dierkes, who had only started work at the Mapleton, Illinois, foundry nine days earlier, was taking a sample of molten iron from a vat kept at more than 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit when he fell in, instantly incinerating him. Peoria County Coroner Jamie Harwood stated in his report a few days later that the cause of death was “thermal annihilation,” noting that it took his team several hours to “sort through the metal fragments and find his remains.”
According to his obituary, Dierkes was a “hard-working teddy bear of a man with calloused hands and a tender heart.” He left behind his “best friend and life partner, Jessica Sutter,” as well three young daughters, ranging in age from four to 12.
In a news release accompanying the OSHA report, officials made clear Caterpillar’s culpability in Dierkes’ death in unusually direct terms for the agency.
“A worker’s life could have been spared if Caterpillar had made sure required safety protections were in place, a fact that only adds to this tragedy,” said OSHA Regional Administrator Bill Donovan in Chicago. OSHA Area Director Christine Zortman in Peoria added, “Caterpillar’s failure to meet its legal responsibilities to ensure the safety and health of workers leaves this worker’s family, friends and co-workers to grieve needlessly.”
The company failed to protect employees by installing a guardrail or other restraints above not just one, but three iron melters, according to OSHA. Across three shifts, workers faced a life-threatening hazard when taking temperature readings, button samples, thermal cups, or adding alloy bags to the melters.
Despite the flagrant character of the violation, and the fact that Dierkes was the second fatality at the foundry in six months, OSHA fined Caterpillar just $145,027, a microscopic pittance for a company that took in $50 billion in revenue in 2021.
For comparison, the $145,027 fine—the agency’s maximum amount for a willful violation!—is less than .003 percent of the company’s $4.5 billion in operating profit last year. It is also less than half the price of a medium-sized Caterpillar bulldozer, and equivalent to less than two days’ pay for CEO Jim Umpleby III, who received $24 million in compensation in 2021.
In other words, for Caterpillar, the fine is the unremarkable cost of doing business, no more noticeable than a minor accounting error.
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