On November 13, 1974, 28-year-old Karen Silkwood is killed in a car accident near Crescent, Oklahoma, north of Oklahoma City. Silkwood worked as a technician at a plutonium plant operated by the Kerr-McGee Corporation, and she had been critical of the plant’s health and safety procedures. In September, she had complained to the Atomic Energy Commission about unsafe conditions at the plant (a week before her death, plant monitors had found that she was contaminated with radioactivity herself), and the night she died, she was on her way to a meeting with a union representative and a reporter for The New York Times, reportedly with a folder full of documents that proved that Kerr-McGee was acting negligently when it came to worker safety at the plant. However, no such folder was found in the wreckage of her car, lending credence to the theory that someone had forced her off the road to prevent her from telling what she knew.
On the night of November 5, Silkwood was polishing plutonium pellets that would be used to make fuel rods for a “breeder reactor” nuclear-power plant. At about 6:30 P.M., an alpha detector mounted on her glove box (the piece of equipment that was supposed to protect her from exposure to radioactive materials) went off: According to the machine, her right arm was covered in plutonium. Further tests revealed that the plutonium had come from the inside of her gloves—that is, the part of her gloves that was only in contact with her hands, not the pellets. Plant doctors monitored her for the next few days, and what they found was quite unusual: Silkwood’s urine and feces samples were heavily contaminated with radioactivity, as was the apartment she shared with another plant worker, but no one could say why or how that “alpha activity” had gotten there. (In fact, measurements after her death indicated that Silkwood had ingested the plutonium somehow; again, no one could say how or why.)
After work on November 13, Silkwood went to a union meeting before heading home in her white Honda. Soon, police were summoned to the scene of an accident along Oklahoma’s State Highway 74: Silkwood had somehow crashed into a concrete culvert. She was dead by the time help arrived. An autopsy revealed that she had taken a large dose of Quaaludes before she died, which would likely have made her doze off at the wheel; however, an accident investigator found skid marks and a suspicious dent in the Honda’s rear bumper, indicating that a second car had forced Silkwood off the road.
Silkwood’s father sued Kerr-McGee, and the company eventually settled for $1.3 million, minus legal fees. Kerr-McGee closed its Crescent plant in 1979.
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What’s so mysterious about it. She was ratting out the company. She posed a threat to profits. She had to die.
And she did.
The ‘company’ would murder such a high profile Union figure and not expect blowback via even more publicity ? The Union murdered this useful idiot. Bet on it.
I remember once back around 1981 , shit eating transient Yankee agitators came by our local Southern bar promoting a strike with a recently built energy company. The local clientele were all tradesman who’s average pay barely exceeded 5 bucks an hour , while the Union ass-wipes were making 25+ , yet crying for more.
Long story short. some of the local guys at the bar had broke picket lines and took the jobs of the striking snot-suckers , which made them furious, so they came to spit at and cuss the men they called scabs, although they didn’t dare come in the bar, to do it. They yelled from outside.
Eventually a group of us were leaving and one of the leaders of the bravados , came up to a friend who was identified as a “scab” and spit in his face. He immediately got knocked on his ass. And, that was the end of their “scab’ confrontation.
Later on, during another local strike, in an unconnected incidence , some Union thugs shot though the window of a “scab’s ” bedroom , hitting his pregnant wife in the face , who later on due to severe disfigurement took her own life.
So who really killed Silkwood ? Unions i.e Mafioso have a stronger track record of murder than companies. Of I had to wager, I’d bet on the Union.
Unions ruin good people and are NOT your friends.
I think there are probably more than few people who could share some union shitbags stories here.
My experience with unions was during and after 8 months of working in a foundry. There was a massive 50% layoff. I was going to trade school at night and because there were no jobs available, not even fast food and grocery cart herder, I doubled down on finishing trade school so I could get out of the state.
About 3 years later my parents get a letter from the union, but addressed to me. I finally received it about 2 weeks after they received it, informing me to get back to work at the foundry last Monday morning, or else. It didn’t say what action would be taken.
On Wednesday while at work doing what I went to school for, a union thug shows up, skips the front door and goes in the back door. At the time I was getting a lecture from the shop owner when this mentally defective thug barges in and starts threatening to beat me up. All the owner did was yell for our janitor/delivery truck driver from Yugoslavia. He shows up immediately being in a small shop. The owner tells him to deal with the mentally defective union thug. He yells in his broken English, “Me Fix! Come with me!” and then picks up the union terrorist by the neck and carries him out back using only one hand. I suspect for the entire trip out back, the union terrorist could not breathe. No idea what happened next, but it took two days and a tow truck until the local government to remove the union terrorist’s car from the street. Our janitor/delivery truck driver from Yugoslavia was not seen for the rest of the day, and neither was his car.
That was the end of my union problems.
I am convinced it is possible to pack a union terrorist thug like luggage into the back of a VW Rabbit without having to put down the back seat.
When you work in a union shop, you don’t work for the owners of the shop. You work for the union. Either do as they say, or expect to die.
I like. Got a few union stories as well. Tho not as good as this one. Just FU’s to union admins and I ain’t gonna do that. Saw mill, and no thugs. Probably because I had quit a few fellas willing to back me up.
What’s the real story ? Bolshevik woos homely gal . Manipulates homely single gal for Union purposes ( i.e mo’ money.) Expendable homely gal serves purpose . Homely gal not nearly as important as Jimmy Hoffa dispatched by Union.. Movie made demonizing Nuclear Corp. Protection money paid. Union velly velly happy. End of story.
I’ve seen and read of Union thugs shoot innocent people for less. If its the main stream narrative, it’s probably a lie.
“Karen dropped out of Lamar College and became a gypsy-wife, migrating with her husband from town to town across Texas—Longview, Corsicana, Sweetwater, Midland, Seminole. They finally ended up in Duncan, Oklahoma, bankrupt, with three children and a marriage that was falling apart. Karen’s father, bitterly against the marriage, was so disappointed in his daughter that their relationship remained strained for the rest of her tragic life.
Bill Meadows offered Karen an uncontested divorce if she would agree to give him custody of their children, Beverly (Kristi), Michael, and Dawn. She refused. Finally in l972, after seven years of marriage, she tossed in the towel and walked out of the house without explanation, leaving her children in the care of their babysitter, whom Bill would later marry. Two days later, Karen called Bill from Oklahoma City and told him that she would agree to an unconditional divorce and grant him custody of the children if he granted her visiting rights. And she took her name back—Karen Gay Silkwood”
http://historicheroines.org/2015/11/13/karen-silkwood-disillusioned/
Bottom line, the evil people always win, and the good people often pay the ultimate price for being moral…. The world is a fuckedupplace.
She was “Heched”
It was covid.