Goodyear to pay $1.75M after four deaths at Va. factory

Associated Press

RICHMOND, Va.

Goodyear will pay $1.75 million to settle workplace health and safety violations at its Danville, Va., tire plant where four workers died on the job over the course of a year, officials announced Friday.

Goodyear, the United Steelworkers and the state Department of Labor and Industry reached a settlement agreement calling for the penalty and laying out a process to fix workplace hazards, the department said in a statement.

Between August 2015 and August 2016, four workers died at the plant near the North Carolina border that manufactures aviation and specialty tires. State inspectors conducted 11 inspections that resulted in more than 100 violations.

Among the workers killed was 53-year-old Charles “Greg” Cooper, who died of burns and drowning. His body was found in April in a pit of boiling water and oil, 6 feet, 8 inches deep. Investigators found that the floor around the pit was slick with oil, grease and slurry and the opening Cooper fell into had been unguarded for more than five months since a sump pump had been removed.

“While nothing will replace our sister and brothers who were fatally injured, the elements of the settlement agreement ... will greatly improve safety at the Danville plant,” Danny Barber, the local union chapter president said in a statement.