Monday, March 23, 2020

Is the chemical enterprise essential?

The Chemical Sector—composed of a complex, global supply chain—converts various raw materials into diverse products that are essential to modern life. Based on the end product produced, the sector can be divided into five main segments, each of which has distinct characteristics, growth dynamics, markets, new developments, and issues: Basic chemicals; Specialty chemicals; Agricultural chemicals; Pharmaceuticals; Consumer products 
Essential Workforce
  • Workers supporting the chemical and industrial gas supply chains, including workers at chemical manufacturing plants, workers in laboratories, workers at distribution facilities, workers who transport basic raw chemical materials to the producers of industrial and consumer goods, including hand sanitizers, food and food additives, pharmaceuticals, textiles, and paper products.
  • Workers supporting the safe transportation of chemicals, including those supporting tank truckcleaning facilities and workers who manufacture packaging items
  • Workers supporting the production of protective cleaning and medical solutions, personal protective equipment, and packaging that prevents the contamination of food, water, medicine, among others essential products
  • Workers supporting the operation and maintenance of facilities (particularly those with high risk chemicals and/ or sites that cannot be shut down) whose work cannot be done remotely and requires the presence of highly trained personnel to ensure safe operations, including plant contract workers who provide inspections
  • Workers who support the production and transportation of chlorine and alkali manufacturing,single-use plastics, and packaging that prevents the contamination or supports the continued manufacture of food, water, medicine, and other essential products, including glass container manufacturing
I imagine that companies will be more-or-less running on the honor system here, but it seems to me that if you're work at a plant in California, you're considered part of the essential workforce. Would be interesting to know if/how this will be enforced...

2 comments:

  1. I'm currently working for a chemicals manufacturer in CA - since I'm in sales, I am working from home right now, and I suspect all the office/non-lab staff are as well. Our COO sent a company-wide e-mail stating that we are an essential business and still open, and I think its basically only the lab/production workers who are on-site right now, but with reduced staffing and with staggering of shifts.

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  2. In IL - the Gov issued an executive order last week with much the same verbiage as California and NY. The IL State Police and the country sheriff's office have come out to say that they will not be enforcing "stay-at-home" by pulling drivers over for simply driving.

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looks like Blogger doesn't work with anonymous comments from Chrome browsers at the moment - works in Microsoft Edge, or from Chrome with a Blogger account - sorry! CJ 3/21/20