Excerpt: Innoculation

Thiago had worked for KHJ Recycling for seven months. This made him
the second most senior member of his crew. The senior member of the
crew was the supervisor, who never had to go far into the pit, and
whose salary included an allowance for safety gear. That safety
equipment allowance, and a job description that did not include having
to crawl around in decades-old refuse, made Crew Supervisor a
tolerable job.

Thiago was not, however, a Crew Supervisor. He was Senior Recovery
Specialist, grade 2. This meant he was tasked with digging and prying
to enable the KHJ Industrial Rehabilitation Facilitator to crash its
metal maw down in to the choicest parts of the landfill currently
being excavated. Thiago Pasquetti had been hired for this work while
still a paulistano living in Brazil. He was specifically hired by a
Brazilian subcontractor for a company based in Dubai that was
contracted to supply workers to KHJ's Industrial Reclaimation
division.

The string of corporations that managed his recruitment from his home
outside Sao Paulo through to the temporary camp at Fresh Kills. He
lived in a trailer with 7 other workers. They slept in bunkbeds
stacked three high on either side of a barracks that started life as a
shipping container. There was a space heater that barely kept up with
the harsh cold that came in from the North Atlantic.

It was one of the days when the raw cold froze the inside of his nose
every time he inhaled. Like the rest of the crew, Thiago was only
wearing a lightweight dustmask rather than a heavy duty respirator as
he was working. Leather gloves protected his hands, but his jeans
had slices and holes that matched the scratches and scars on his legs.

Like most of the KHJ Recycling workers who came through several layers
of corporate cut-outs and subcontractors, they were officially
responsible for making sure they were equipped with the required
safety gear. After KHJ lobbied for and got the Critical Industries
Employment Act passed, they were able to push the responsibility for
contract employee safety onto the contract administration companies.
With several layers of corporations making a trail through several
different companies with different laws, it became industry standard
for employee safety was the responsibility of the employees.

The entire administrative training for Theigo and the other fifteen
men who sat in the Sao Paulo office building before being shipped up
to the United States was a two hour briefing. Most of the briefing
was spent on discussion of how their money would be wired back and
held in escrow for them. While the slick well-groomed man in the
suit who was leading the briefing never quite came out and said it, it
was strongly implied that they would be in big trouble if they were
injured due to a lack of the required safety equipment.

So when they got to Staten Island and the Fresh Kills Industrial
Reclamation Facility, they got what they could afford from the company
store and made do for the rest. Of the seventeed men in Thiego's
original "class", three were dead and four more injured badly enough
that they had to return to Brazil as "permanently furloughed" employees.

In all seven cases, the back pay and the insurance pay-outs -- handled
by another KHJ subsidiary corporation -- had costs deducted for
transport and handling, and also penalties for improper equipment in
the workplace deducted. It was the policy of the insurance subsidiary
corporation, however, that they would never require the furloughed
employee - or their family - to pay more than their back pay and
insurance pay-out in the event of a major injury.

When the heavy blades of the input end of the KHJ Industrial
Reclamation Facilitator chewed through Thiego's torso it went
front-first. As he saw the pitted steel slash towards him, he had
just enough time to pray that his Yari and little Roberto would get
some of the insurance payout as well as his escrow pay.

The rest was screaming.