The silence about conditions at the plant, however, is not surprising. Pantex is an imposing 16,000 acre facility located seventeen miles northeast of the small town of Amarillo in Texas' high plains. It has been the center of life in Amarillo for decades- first as a bomb plant in the early days of World War II, and then as a nuclear weapons production and disassembly plant beginning in the 1950s. With a workforce of 3,800, Pantex is the business of Amarillo today. Photo by Robert Del Tredici Pantex management, for its part, has done little to encourage openness about health and safety concerns.
Threats are common currency at the plant.
According to workers, management issued constant threats that plant would shut down if they did not get the work out. They were told that management would close the plant if workers did not buy in. On the job, workers who expressed concerns were often relocated to other work stations, and replaced with more compliant employees. In one case, a supervisor who had misplaced weapons parts due to rushed and sloppy operations enjoined his workers to assist him in covering up the incident. Given the longstanding atmosphere of fear and distrust at the plant and in Amarillo, GAP attorneys were astounded at the local response to GAP's investigation into Pantex.