- Employees at a Kentucky candle factories said supervisors said they'd be fired if they left early due to the storms.
- At least 15 employees requested to leave and shelter from the pending storms at home, NBC News reported.
- One employee said she heard a manager tell four others they'd be fired if they chose to leave early.
Employees at a Kentucky candle factory that was destroyed by this weekend's devastating tornadoes said supervisors told workers they would be fired if they left their shifts early to seek shelter from the impending storms.
Eight people died when the Mayfield Consumer Products facility collapsed during the storms, according to the Courier-Journal. The National Guard told local news outlet WLEX-TV that they concluded the search late Monday.
The factory was among the hardest hit locations as tornadoes and extreme weather tore through multiple states in the Midwest late Friday, causing catastrophic damage and killing dozens of people.
As sirens for extreme weather began to ring around 5:30 p.m. local time, at least 15 employees at the factory requested to leave early to take shelter at home from the coming tornadoes, NBC News reported. Four employees claimed that managers ignored their requests and even told workers they'd probably be fired if they departed early.
"'If you leave, you're more than likely to be fired,'" McKayla Emery, a 21-year-old employee at the factory, told NBC News, recalling conversations she overheard between supervisors and four workers standing near her who had asked to leave early. "I heard that with my own ears."
According to the report, some workers left early in spite of supervisors' warnings. Overtime pay was available to factory workers, though it was not clear if employees who stayed on Friday were offered extra compensation, NBC News reported.
Another employee, Haley Condor, corroborated Emery's claims, telling the outlet that about 15 people working the night shift asked to go home early following the first emergency alarm.
Condor said team leaders initially told employees they couldn't leave because of safety precautions, making workers congregate together in bathrooms and hallways following the first emergency alarm around 5:30 p.m. After the first warning passed with little fallout, employees were sent back to work under the assumption that the danger was gone, Condor told NBC News.
Nearly four hours passed between the first alarm bell and the second, which sounded sometime after 9:00 p.m., signaling the arrival of the massive tornado that caused the brunt of the destruction.
Two additional employees, Latavia Halliburton and Mark Saxton, also said they were not given the option to leave early.
A spokesman for Mayfield Consumer Products denied the employees' allegations, telling NBC News that they were "absolutely untrue."
"We've had a policy in place since COVID began," Bob Ferguson told the outlet. "Employees can leave anytime they want to leave and they can come back the next day."
Ferguson also denied that managers told employees they risked being fired if they departed early. He stressed that safety protocols were followed.
On Sunday, a spokesperson for the candle factory said, of the 110 people believed to be in the factory at the time of the tornado's impact, eight are confirmed dead, while another eight remain unaccounted for. The rest of the employees who were at the factory during the storms have since been accounted for.
The facility, which manufactures scented candles, was completely leveled by the destructive storms. Drone photos from the scene show nothing left but rubble and debris.
A representative for Mayfield Consumer Products did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.