Owner of the jerky company said she was fired because "production was slow" (File Photo)
One early Monday morning in July 2014, a band saw blade at a West Virginia beef jerky plant lopped off a man's thumb. Upon hearing a cry of pain, and witnessing the blood that ran down her coworker's hand and arm, a food processing employee named Michele Butler-Savage rushed to help. Butler-Savage attempted to stanch the wound with paper towels and cold water. Using her cellphone, she began to dial for emergency medical aid.
The call to 911 did not go through. According to a lawsuit filed by the Labor Department on Thursday, Butler-Savage's boss, John M. Bachman, ordered her to hang up the phone. Bachman collected the thumb, which moments before had been part of a man named Chris Crane, and told the shift supervisor to drive Crane to an emergency care clinic. The emergency room transferred Crane to a hospital, where surgeons were unable to reattach the digit.
At the scene of the accident, where, per the lawsuit, "Crane's blood had spurted all over the floor and wall," Butler-Savage alleged that Bachman did little in the way of cleaning afterward. She contacted a USDA inspector, explaining her sanitation concerns and that her boss denied her call to an ambulance.
More than an appendage would be lost in the accident. Two days later, Butler-Savage was fired from her five-month-old job at Lone Star Western Beef.
Bachman owns Lone Star Western Beef, a jerky company with the slogan, "This ain't no wimpy city slicker beef jerky." Crane lost his thumb at the Lone Star plant that was located in Fairmont, West Virginia; the beef jerky facility moved to Pennsylvania in 2015.
Bachman told Butler-Savage, according to the lawsuit, she was fired because "production was slow," though he also complained that "there were too many government rules to follow" and "the government always had a hand in his business." The Labor Department filed a lawsuit against Lone Star on Thursday in federal court in the Northern District of West Virginia.
Butler-Savage's actions showed "basic human decency," said Occupational Safety and Health Administration Philadelphia Administrator Richard Mendelson in a Labor Department news release. An OSHA investigation, according to the release, found that the jerky company violated the law when Bachman fired her for her aborted attempt to call 911.
"No worker should have to fear retaliation from their employer for calling 911 in an emergency, or taking other action to report a workplace safety or health incident," Mendelson said.
The suit seeks punitive damages and lost wages arising from Butler-Savage's termination. Lone Star Western Beef did not respond to a request for comment from The Washington Post sent early Friday. The Associated Press was also unable to reach Bachman at the company's phone number.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)