Sweden, Falkenberg. Winter 2012.
A bunch of selfemployed german fitters went to a huge silo plant, that was run by a swedish major agricultural company, to do some construction work.
The leader miscalculated in the biding proposal and it turned out, that there had been much more work to be done, than previously planned.
Due to complexity of the additional construction work, the boss got more and more nervous, as he lost overview.
Intonation between him and the workers started to get rude. No one knew if he would be fully paid for the accomplished work. While the swedish factoryworker was going home after seven hours of whistling work, the german assembly squad had to work regulary twelve hours and more.
The atmosphere amongst the workers was entirely bad and yelling at each other was the normal mode of communication.
Cutting, welding, drilling, wrenching and humping iron all day. Permanently changing working place between inside and outside. Some of the levels inside the silo where as cold as outside, while others were providing 40°C, due to heat generating production processes.
On some levels their has been a tremendous noise pollution. The warmer the floor, the higher the noise produced by the machines. The facilities on the topfloor were covered by a very fine powder, that caused some of the workers heavy cough and even nosebleed.
Sharing two campinghuts, squating together, drinking beer and booze till late in the evening, wasn´t exactly the recreational effect needed after a long day of heavy labor.
After two weeks of continuously working, drinking, smoking and worrying, the head of that venture collapsed, and was admitted to a hospitale. The next one in hierarchy took over.
With the twentiest day, half of the work was finished and everyone could take a break.
These men got pushed to bearable limits of working conditions.
I was one of them.
