Brother: Crushed worker worried about factory's conditions
The exterior of L&S Packing Co. in East Farmingdale, where shipping manager Yolanda Gonzalez died Tuesday night. (June 2, 2010) Credit: Karen Wiles Stabile
The East Farmingdale factory where a ton of vodka-flavored sauce crushed a worker to death will remain closed for the rest of the week because of the accident, the president of the family-owned business said Thursday.
The business, L&S Packing Co., has made available grief counselors for its employees as loved ones of the worker, Yolanda Gonzalez, began the first day of her wake, said Louis J. Scaramelli IV, the company president.
Gonzalez, of Lake Ronkonkoma, was killed, Suffolk police said, when two pallets of the sauce collapsed on her Tuesday evening at L&S at 101 Central Ave. She was labeling pallets of canned tomatoes. Other employees rushed to her aid after the accident, Scaramelli said.
"We loved Yolanda. She was a great person. We thought of her as one of the family," he said.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the federal workplace safety agency, has opened an inquiry into the accident - an investigation that could take up to six months. Depending on the findings, OSHA can levy fines against L&S, said Ted Fitzgerald, a spokesman for agency's regional office.
Gonzalez, who worked as a shipping manager, became one of the few women to die on the job nationwide; the vast majority of workplace deaths are typically men, said Martin Kohli, an economist with the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In 2008, the latest year available, 5,214 people died in work-related accidents nationally - 4,827 were men and 387 were woman. In New York, 213 died, 194 of whom were men and 19 were women, Kohli said.
Elliot Gonzalez, Gonzalez's brother, said his sister had complained about conditions at L&S, where she had worked for the last four years.
Yolanda Gonzalez, 39, of Lake Ronkonkoma was killed while working at an East Farmingdale factory on June 1, 2010. Credit: Handout
"She would complain to me about the skids tipping over, things not stacked right, not having enough space to stack" items, Gonzalez said.
L&S has had no previous incidents requiring an OSHA investigation, the agency has said.
Scaramelli said the warehouse is properly and safely set up, and that the company had received no complaints.
Said Scaramelli's father, Louis Scaramelli III: "She never told us."
Out East with Doug Geed: Wine harvests, a fish market, baked treats and poinsettias NewsdayTV's Doug Geed visits two wineries and a fish market, and then it's time for holiday cheer, with a visit to a bakery and poinsettia greenhouses.
Out East with Doug Geed: Wine harvests, a fish market, baked treats and poinsettias NewsdayTV's Doug Geed visits two wineries and a fish market, and then it's time for holiday cheer, with a visit to a bakery and poinsettia greenhouses.
