When Carl Bosch became head of BASF he was happy to finally lead the company, but wasn’t much of a social person. BASF at this point was the world's biggest chemical company. But when Bosch started it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows. The first problem was at the Leuna plant. When BASF first started workers were treated like the companies children. Now the workers were rioting for better pay and working conditions. Workers threatened to stop working it they didn’t get what they wanted. Other complaints were the workers weren’t trained enough, dangerous equipment and the building was built so quickly the conditions were dangerous, long working hours, and the living quarters were a disaster. Bosch didn’t hear of these complaints before, but this was because of the war. He decided to make a eight hours day a five day work week. He also made bigger and better living areas. Gave the workers bonuses for Christmas. Bosch tried to make it so he wouldn’t have to sit through the long negotiation meetings, but it didn’t work. The workers would have long meetings about their complaints. Bosch had enough with it so he made scientific management. This was efficiency experts going around checking what everyone was doing and the efficiency of the plant. If a worker took a break or went to the bathroom it was noted. The workers hated it. The Leuna workers decided to take over Leuna they had some machine guns and they had a ten day stand off. The police decided to go in and about thirty workers died and one police officer died. Bosch got control back and fired every work at Leuna. He hired all the workers one by one. Some things changed like some of the workers rights to protest and no one would be rehired under the age of twenty-five. Also the security was upgraded and every worker had an id card. Soon the factories were back to normal. Bosch thought he was a good person and was very giving to the workers, but due to his social interactions being distant the labor relations weren’t good.
September 21st 1921 Bosch was sitting in his office when shaking had started. He was in his office in Heidelberg about twelve miles from Oppau. He knew exactly what the shaking was. There had been an explosion at Oppau.
When he got there he saw a huge crater where the plant was. Smoke was everywhere and families were sitting on rubble, other people were pulling out bodies. The managers at the plant said there were so many dead people and more injured. Bosch was horrified, but didn’t show it. He went back to his office to draw up plans to get Oppau up and running again. The day after the explosion workers started to clear the damage out and build another plant. Workers families and friends put crosses, flowers, and other things at the crater for the dead. Then four days after Bosch set up a memorial service for the dead. Bosch was devastated since he was the builder could he have been the cause for hundreds of people's deaths. He wanted to build another factory, but what if this one exploded too? He gave a speech at the memorial service on how him and his fellow co-workers grew together during this project. Many people wanted to know the cause of the explosion. Was BASF making explosives again and could this disaster happen again? The examiners decided it was because of a fertilizer silo. The fertilizer in the silos would clump up so to break their fertilizer apart they would use small explosive charges.The fertilizer that was made was ammonia sulfate and this was shown to not be explosive. The thing that was explosive was the sodium nitrate (saltpeter). During the war they were selling this stuff so much BASF continued to sell it to farmers that preferred it. BASF mixed the sodium nitrate with the ammonia sulfate. The scientists said that putting the nitrates in there in smaller amounts would make it so it wasn’t explosive. The scientists were wrong because this is what caused the explosion. The estimation of the power of the explosion was the size of a small atomic bomb. In the end the explosion caused 500 million marks of damage. 561 workers ended up dying and 1,700 injured. BASF paid a the families an amount and gave widows a small pension. About a third of the damages were covered by insurance. The plant was fixed in about three months. Bosch came back to work at BASF in 1922 because he had taken a break after the explosion. He didn’t come back as the same person he was more quiet and serious. He also started to drink heavily.
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