THROUGH THE MILL PRODUCER: PHILIP VINE REPORTER: AMANDA MILLAR Karen Intro: For four years Adam Hopkins made tyres for Firestone, working long and hard for the Japanese-owned multi-national. But one day, he took a risk to keep his machine running, got trapped and died. Adam's family now want answers. Was their son's death an accident waiting to happen? And why, in the middle of his funeral, were Adam’s workmates told to get back to the plant? The family say the company has been callous, has put them through the mill. Amanda Millar investigates. AMANDA (V/O): On Tuesday, 20th February Firestone worker Adam Hopkins began his twelve hour-shift. An hour and a half later the 30 year old was dead. LYNN HOPKINS: It shouldn't have happened. His whole life was just snuffed, just snuffed out of him. MICHAEL HOPKINS: Last week the phone happened to ring about quarter past, 20 past six, I said to Lynne there's Adam. And then you check yourself and realise it's not the case at all. AMANDA (V/O): Adam’s parents, Lynne and Michael Hopkins. MICHAEL HOPKINS: This is a 1979 Mark 1 Motor Guzzi. AMANDA (V/O): The Italian racing bike kept in his spare room, that Adam built from a thousand pieces with a little help from his dad, Michael. MICHAEL HOPKINS: He was just so meticulous and everything had to be just perfect. AMANDA: Now when you see this beast like this. MICHAEL HOPKINS: I’m very proud of him that's for sure. LYNN HOPKINS: Today all I’m going to do is to poke through this little drawer. I don't know that I can go through any other drawers, in the meantime do these bits and pieces. AMANDA: This is what they're left with, thirty years of Adam’s life in photos. LYNNE HOPKINS: Just makes it so hard sometimes, the motorbikes he worked on. Look, just stripped bare and just he builds them up again. He's amazing. Such a clever little man. Our lovely son is just not going to be here anymore and how do you cope with that? MICHAEL HOPKINS: I think what really has undermined the situation is that part of his dignity was taken away in the attitude of management. AMANDA (TO CAM): Adam’s family say they've been left in a compassionless vacuum that's denying them the support and information they need in order to grieve. They want to know...was Adam working long shifts with an untrained workmate? Had previous accidents on the same machine been properly investigated? Did safety systems fail? Could Adam’s life in fact have been saved? And why were his workmates ordered back to the job halfway through his funeral? MICHAEL HOPKINS: We feel very betrayed, we're just gutted. They have shown as a company very little remorse whatsoever. COLIN DUNNE: I’ve offered the family every assistance that they would require. AMANDA (V/O): Colin Dunne, Firestone's manager in Christchurch. COLIN DUNNE: We have, I believe, undertaken, taken up the obligations that an employer is required to do in these circumstances. AMANDA (V/O): He works for the Bridgestone Corporation, a Tokyo based multi-national with sales in 1999 totalling $36 billion. The New Zealand head office is in Auckland, but production is in Christchurch where they employ 260 people. When Adam went to work, his parents say, he gave the company everything. But on February the 2oth, he became the plant's first ever fatality. This is where Adam Hopkins worked and died, amateur footage smuggled to us as we're not allowed to film in the factory. It's called the Banbury mill. It mixes and feeds the factory strips of rubber, two storeys high and regarded as very dangerous. MICHAEL HOPKINS: He respected it. He wasn't scared but he respected it. He was no fool. AMANDA (V/O): Normally he'd share the shift with a trusted partner, allowing them to do two and a half hours on, two and a half hours off. But the week before he died Adam had been paired up with someone untrained on the mill, and had to do 12 hours solo. MICHAEL HOPKINS: He was certainly concerned having to work these 12 hour shifts without relief. He was being assisted by someone who was untrained and put under a tremendous amount of pressure. COLIN DUNNE: The guy that was working with Adam Hopkins was fully trained in what he was doing. AMANDA: He was not a fully trained Banbury mill operator. COLIN DUNNE: He was not trained on the mill. AMANDA (V/O): Something that might have changed the outcome for Adam. It was vital to him that he had a trained operator with him, something he'd made plain to his bosses. MIKE FREEMAN: When he first raised his concerns in November last year, he was accused by one of the shift managers of being soft. AMANDA (V/O): Mike Freeman is the Union or Employees' Society secretary who worked at the plant for 20 years. MIKE FREEMAN: There was an element of fear in that place and it still exists. The fear is and was that if you spoke out of turn, if you bucked the system, if you complained then you'd be singled out. COLIN DUNNE: There is no fear and intimidation in our plant. People work there, they work there for a long time. They are happy in their work. AMANDA (V/O): The last time Lynne and Michael Hopkins heard from their youngest son was when he phoned them the night before he died. MICHAEL HOPKINS: He said to me, I’m off to bed now, I’ve got another 12 hour shift tomorrow, I don't want to be late out of bed. AMANDA (V/O): That morning at 7.15 some rubber got caught in the rollers of Adam’s mill. With no guards to stop him he went under the machinery to clear it. Management say no operator would ever do that. (I/V): Wasn't that a reckless act by Adam when he knew the dangers of that machine? MIKE FREEMAN: It was something that a number of people had done before and got away with. It was probably in his thought processes, it was a way of, hey if I stop the machine I’m going to cost the company money. But I can get that rubber out, that stuck rubber out in a matter of seconds and the operation can continue. (Demonstrating) The rubber actually must have got stuck off this roller here and was jammed down somewhere in this position behind this batch let off table. AMANDA (V/O): Mike Freeman explains with the smuggled video how Adam was crushed. MIKE FREEMAN: Adam has made the decision to come through under the table and between a roller and the actual top of the table, and he obviously got caught and dragged under. And when the emergency system was activated, the table actually dropped down and the knives and the rollers on the table re-set, so the distance that he was trapped in went from say, that distance to about that distance. He had the life squeezed out of him. That's what happened to him. AMANDA (TO CAM): How significant was it that Adam’s partner that day was untrained on the mill? He'd heard the scream from the machine, ran and pushed the emergency button, not realising that that would crush Adam. The year before an operator claims he'd asked management for changes to be made to the table so that it wouldn't come down in an emergency. COLIN DUNNE: Those concerns were never expressed to me. I was never aware of any concerns by some of our engineering staff about the way the table reacted. AMANDA (TO CAM): Experienced operators have told us they would have pressed another button and that wouldn't have killed Adam. Adam's parents don't blame that operator but they do feel that the company must take responsibility for the lack of training. (V/O): Originally they took solace in the knowledge that Adam’s neck had been broken and he died instantly. But the post mortem has since revealed it was asphyxia which may mean his death could have taken some minutes. LYNNE HOPKINS: His neck was not broken. His brain wasn't damaged. His heart and lungs weren't damaged. He was only compressed. He could exhale but he couldn't inhale. MIKE FREEMAN: My first reaction was when I heard that Adam had died, was he must have been killed instantly. Then you find out he wasn't. The response times immediately following the accident become absolutely paramount. AMANDA (V/O): After the emergency stop button was pressed workmates raced to the rescue locker. It was locked. The key was in a perspex box. MIKE FREEMAN: One of the workers grabbed an iron bar. He kicked at it, he used his fists. You could imagine. These people are in... AMANDA: Panic. MIKE FREEMAN: Yeah absolutely. AMANDA: They couldn't get at it. COLIN DUNNE: They did get at it. AMANDA: It took too long. They had to get an iron bar. COLIN DUNNE: As far as I know the reaction time was immediate. AMANDA (V/O): Colin Dunne contends he was there in five minutes, but that's challenged by his workers. This man has the best idea how long the rescue took and how long Adam was alive for. He was first on the scene, but he worked for Firestone and the company's forbidden him or any other employees to talk to us. His partner told 20/20 he lay down next to Adam. PARTNER: He was could see some bubbles and saliva in his mouth and he thought that he was alive when he first got there. AMANDA (V/O): But he's told her that help didn't arrive for ten minutes. Mike Freeman says the gas cutting equipment they were desperate to get to would have released Adam in one or two minutes. First they couldn't get the rescue gear to him and then the leads didn't reach, and in the end they had to chase down another gas cutter. MIKE FREEMAN: Maybe there was a chance he may have been saved. All they had to do was cut through one bar to release him. That's all they had to do. AMANDA (V/O): When they finally cut Adam out of the machine, he was dead. Hours after Adam’s death, management was urging Mike Freeman to get the production line back up and running again. MIKE FREEMAN: On that same day, 3.30 in the afternoon, pressure was put on myself, five phone calls from the company trying to have the work restarted, first of all, as of 12 midnight on the same day. COLIN DUNNE: We have to maintain an output of production. AMANDA: We're talking about a man who's died here? COLIN DUNNE: I know we're talking about a man who's died here, but at some stage we have to start the plant. AMANDA (V/O): The next day, the family were paid a visit by Colin Dunne and his management team. MICHAEL HOPKINS: They said very little. They said they were sorry, but really not a lot. It was a very, very difficult gathering. LYNNE HOPKINS: Words just poured out from me, whether they were words they wanted to hear or not, just about the sacredness of life, to hell with the production side of things so much, that life must mean more than just making money. AMANDA (V/O): Bridgestone Firestone agreed to pay for the funeral. They offered the union a 24 hour shutdown so the men could attend, but in the meantime management wanted them back to work. The union rejected the deal saying the factory was still unsafe. MIKE FREEMAN: Our position was, nobody would be going back into that plant until we were satisfied that the safety systems that they said had been fixed, had been fixed. AMANDA (V/O): OSH had closed down Adam’s machine the morning of his death. Later that same day it cleared the mill for use, satisfied with the new guards the company had installed to prevent another accident. But when the union demanded its own inspection two days later those guards were still being modified. The emergency stop button failed five times, a bleeper on the pager system didn't go off and the emergency rescue locker was empty. MIKE FREEMAN: So here you have a company saying please come back to work, everything is in order, and the four most important items relating to that accident and death, they weren't working. Nothing was working. COLIN DUNNE: All those things would have been in place before we started factory operation and they were guaranteed that. AMANDA (V/O): So Firestone, thinking it had an illegal strike on its hands got an injunction to force a return to work. The company says it tried to tell the union on Friday but the first thing Mike Freemen claims he knew about it was on Saturday morning when a document was shoved under his door. MIKE FREEMAN: It's court orders ordering an immediate return to work as of 12 noon. AMANDA: This is the day of the funeral? MIKE FREEMAN: The day of the funeral. This is less than three hours before the funeral starts. AMANDA (V/O): In Part Two Adam’s workmates are told to leave the funeral. LYNNE HOPKINS: Those poor guys will never ever be able to throw a flower on the coffin as it's sitting in the bottom of the gave. MIKE FREEMAN: What a way, what a way to be buried. Part II Karen Intro: Two months ago Adam Hopkins was crushed to death at the Firestone plant in Christchurch. His family now believe he was put at risk by the long hours he'd been working and the lack of training given to his workmate. As Amanda Millar continues the story, the union is saying the workers won't return to the job till safety systems are improved, and the company is going to court to force them back. AMANDA (V/O): The morning of Adam Hopkins' funeral, the company had couriers delivering suspension notices to the homes of the workers saying they must go back to work immediately otherwise it could cost them. They'd be liable for loss of production. MIKE FREEMAN: How could you be so insensitive, that here we are ready to bury somebody that was killed in your factory? COLIN DUNNE: Because the union were undertaking stalling tactics and preventing the plant reopening and putting everyone's future at risk. MIKE FREEMAN: How could you use a court system to force people back to work when Adam hadn't even been buried? COLIN DUNNE: The judge ordered that a midday start up was appropriate. AMANDA: Surely you would have thought that's highly inappropriate considering the timing of funeral. COLIN DUNNE: We did not seek a midday start-up. The judge ordered it. AMANDA (V/O): Minutes before the service started, Mike Freeman had got legal advice that his men had to obey the court order. Adam Hopkins was given a full requiem mass. Mike Freeman sat through the service seething. MIKE FREEMAN: Believe me I wanted to get up and say something and my wife said to me, don't you dare. This is not the place. AMANDA (V/O): Mike Freeman was steeling himself for the worst job he's ever had to do. His men had to go back or the company might sue them for loss of production. While family and friends waited for the hearse to take Adam away the union boss had to deliver the bad news to his men. MIKE FREEMAN: So we have a meeting of about 50 or 60 workers in the car park of the church, and it was total disbelief that this could happen. When you say to people, I’m sorry I have a court order here, you're ordered back to work and if you don't go back, I’m obliged to tell you you're in contempt of court. AMANDA: And they were using you to send that message. MIKE FREEMAN: You're left with no alternative. And yes, I wish to God that I’d just turned round and said, “Up yez.” AMANDA (V/O): There was confusion at the burial when they discovered one pallbearer was missing, the colleague who'd been with Adam when he died. MICHAEL HOPKINS: His pallbearer wasn't allowed to be there. They had to go back to work. AMANDA (V/O): He, like the other workers, never did their final bit for the mate they called “Fatboy”. His partner shared his distress. PARTNER: He felt like he couldn't help him when he was stuck in the machine and he couldn't be with him right at the end either. He felt helpless. MICHAEL HOPKINS: We were in enough agony as it was, and it was just like another knife going in. COLIN DUNNE: We, looking back, consider that what happened on that particular day, we would like to change. We're not happy with the situation that occurred on that Saturday. MICHAEL HOPKINS: They've really destroyed something so precious. LYNNE HOPKINS: So very integral to the grieving process, and those poor guys will never, ever, ever, ever be able to have that beer for Adam at the reception. Go along there, throw a flower on the coffin as its sitting in the bottom of the grave. COLIN DUNNE: If we get ourselves into a position where the company is losing production, then we're losing our jobs. That is a massive impact on the economy of Christchurch. AMANDA: But central to this wasn't, in the minds of the family, wasn't the economy of Christchurch, it was the death of their son and the fact that all of this was happening at such a raw moment in their lives. How could you do that? How could you feed the company's position so strongly? COLIN DUNNE: We offered them a 24 hour shut down, they refused. They could have all attended the funeral on the day. There would have been no issues. We offered that. They refused. AMANDA (V/O): Michael and Lynne Hopkins have put off going back to Adam’s house to sort out his belongings, including a classic collection of cars and bikes, like this 1946 Ford all with Firestone tyres, the company brand. LYNNE HOPKINS: As time has gone by you're finding the house hasn't changed. It's still very, very empty, and it gets more and more empty all the time. And its just so hard to be able to pick up the pieces and feel free to go in there and just look at his things and touch his things. But it's just so cold and empty now. AMANDA (V/O): Adding to the family's pain is what they've been told about the safety systems and three previous accidents on the same machine. MICHAEL HOPKINS: A place that I wouldn't like to work in that's for sure. But also a place that we have major concern with regards to the other workers out there. What else is going on out there? AMANDA (V/O): The most serious accident on the mill was in 1997 when a worker damaged his arm. MIKE FREEMAN: The worker concerned was fortunate that he had two trained operators who were immediately behind him and they actually pulled him out before he could go right under the roller itself. AMANDA (V/O): Following that accident, OSH let the company do its own investigation, and wrote: Your investigation and report were thorough and detailed. You have identified areas where the improvement and prevention can be implemented to prevent a reoccurrence. Well done. MIKE FREEMAN: How could they allow a serious accident in 1997 to be investigated by the company itself? It just stands to reason you wouldn't do that. A government agency that's put in place to protect workers' rights should just not accept what a company tells them. AMANDA (V/O): OSH didn't want to appear in this programme. In a fax they said that the law doesn't require their inspectors to investigate every accident. Its report into Adam’s death is due out any day. Whatever the inquiry finds on both sides of the divide recriminations continue about the way they said goodbye to Adam. The day industrial relations got in the way of human relations destroying the dignity of a funeral. MIKE FREEMAN: For the rest of my life I’ve got to accept that, hey I interrupted a funeral service and told people they had to go back to work. AMANDA: Do you feel a sense of betrayal to the Hopkins family? MIKE FREEMAN: Until there's justice, yes I’ll always feel that way. COLIN DUNNE: I don't think that I could be more compassionate to the family of Adam. I realise that possibly there has been extended lengths of time where we haven't be able to visit. I would like to think that I’ve made that mistake. I should have made time to go and talk further with the family. AMANDA (V/O): Six weeks on there's been no contact from the company other than Adam’s last pay-slip arriving in their letterbox. LYNNE HOPKINS: When we opened it, it was only just Adam’s yearly tax return, tax form. Nothing else. MICHAEL HOPKINS: But there wasn't even a note in there to say we're thinking of you, I hope everything is ok. Nothing. LYNNE HOPKINS: Not a cracker. Somebody's at the door. MICHAEL HOPKINS: I’ll go. LYNNE HOPKINS: Oh God. Thinking of you all, lots of love, Sarah. That's my niece. Six weeks later and we're still getting flowers.