"None of the Rails were Real": Factory Staff Reveal the Full Extent of Dangerous Working Conditions

Intense scrutiny has fallen upon the management of a local factory, after whistleblowers submitted evidence that workplace safety compliance documentation, including many photographs, had been synthetically generated. The forgeries included warning labels as well as railings that weren't actually present, among others.

In a spot inspection conducted by the Office of Health and Safety, more than 200 violations were found across the factory floor. Although the office receives thousands of reports a year, in this case what first alerted federal investigators to the scale of the potential issue was a report that claimed that some of the photographs included first aid stations from a manufacturer that hadn't been in business for almost 20 years. Officers conducting a review of the compliance documentation submitted then started noticing more and more irregularities, culminating in

The factory, which was opened in 20XX, employs almost 700 townspeople here, making it a backbone to the local economy. Federal investigators found that management here had communicated with local government officials to anticipate what compliances would be necessary, but hadn't actually followed through on making changes to the factory floor. $30 million dollars of the companies revenue in 20XX had been earmarked for these floor upgrades. A separate upcoming investigation will investigate if this is evidence of collusion or bribery.

At a press conference discussing the extent of the forgery, officials were quoted as saying "double digit amounts of spaces are just not real" - one official noted that in some photographs care had been taken to match the texture of synthetically generated floors to the real deal, but the same attention wasn't applied to ceilings. Beyond this, metallic objects like railings that would usually have a reflective surface, did not actually behave as one would expect.

One factory floor worker that agreed to be interviewed on the condition of anonymity said of the photographs "we saw em' (sic) side by side, it was nothing like how it really was, crazy,... its crazy". While these staff had received training on safety and compliance, few are made aware of the specifics of regulations because individual roles at the factory are compartmentalised - if it's not directly relevant to the job it is treated as extraneous.

This isn't the first time the factory has been in hot water either, in July 20XX, inspectors noticed that many staff were wearing personal protective equipment with expired filters. The modular filters on the PPE cost as little as three dollars each, and are meant to be replaced on a monthly basis, but some workers had reported using the same masks (and filters) for almost two years.