Behind America’s tear gas business boom: Low-wage workers and angry neighbors

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Behind America's tear gas business boom: Low-wage workers and angry neighbors.

“The turnover levels were high,” said a former floor supervisor at Safariland’s Jacksonville plant who was hired through a temp agency called Remedy Staffing. “Some of it was dangerous. You’re dealing with chemicals, sharp edges, a lot of machinery, a lot of heat.”

Between January 2015 and June 10 of this year, medical personnel were called to Safariland 31 times for incidents ranging from fainting, lacerations, chemical exposures and illnesses, according to the Jacksonville Fire and Rescue Department. One Safariland worker hired through ManpowerGroup in Casper sued the company in 2018 after a tear gas machine that he alleged was known to malfunction smashed his fingertip, which then had to be amputated. Safariland denied the allegations.

“It feels like your sinuses are on fire — runny nose, burning eyes,” he said. “If you get the chemicals on your skin, it feels like your skin is burning.”Another temp worker, who spent six months assembling tear gas canisters at Safariland in 2019, said, “Even though we had ventilators, the gas seeps in and you’d work all day with a runny nose and itchy eyes, sneezy. Otherwise it wasn’t too bad.” She was paid $11.50 an hour.

Combined Systems is one of the few employers in Jamestown, a borough of Pennsylvania's Mercer County, with a population of about 600 people. Residents have three main options for work: the local school district, Jamestown Coating Technologies or Combined Systems, according to Jamestown Mayor Esther McClimans.a $2 million grant from the Pennsylvania Redevelopment Assistance Capital program to keep its operations in the state and expand.

 

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Nice to hear we are putting people back to work even if is in a tear gas factory , someone has to pay in taxes . Let's get back to work !

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