Mike Jakubal left the tangy air of northern California's Humboldt County redwood forests to spend a week in Kaiser Aluminum's hot, dusty plant on Tacoma's Tideflats.

"On a good day, it's awful in there," he told striking members of Local 7945 of the United Steelworkers of America on Wednesday night at their weekly barbecue.

"People are dropping like flies from the heat."

Jakubal was hired by the union to report on how the plant is operating with a crew of temporary, nonunion workers.

Jakubal grew up in Wenatchee, but now runs a portable sawmill in the Humboldt area. He agreed to spend a week as an inside source because Maxxam Inc. owns a majority of Kaiser, and Maxxam is controlled by Charles Hurwitz, a Houston, Texas, industrialist whose Northern California redwood timber holdings are being clear-cut.

"We've been fighting Hurwitz over logging," Jakubal said.

His report on working conditions seemed pretty objective, though, and was largely confirmed by Kaiser spokeswoman Susan Ashe.

Although Ashe wouldn't give a specific number of on-the-job injuries, she said the level "is about what we'd expected for blisters and heat problems."

"We're at normal numbers once you account for people acclimatizing."

Kaiser's plants in Washington, Ohio and Louisiana are operating at capacity with about half the number of employees as pre-strike.

Those temporary workers, management staff and retired Kaiser employees are receiving "extensive safety training," she said.

Jakubal said he felt safety training could have been better, but added:

"I think they're paying a lot of attention to safety. There's a lot of inexperience in there, but they're not pushing people to do anything unsafe."

Ashe said regulatory agencies like the Washington Department of Labor and Industries have inspected the company's three plants in the state.

Tacoma, she said, passed easily. A worker at the company's Trentwood rolling mill, near Spokane, lost several fingers in an accident several weeks ago.

Still, she said, safety levels are fine.

"We've received high marks from the regulatory agencies," she said.

And an aluminum smelter is, after all, an incredibly hot and dirty place where high-voltage electrical systems and molten metal can create dangers.

"Oh yeah," Jakubal said. "Just inherently."

The heat, especially, has caused a lot of temporary workers to quit, he said, perhaps half or more of all the temps.

"I think that's exaggerated," Ashe said. "I think we're at least stable, if not ahead of the game."

Jakubal said he earned about $13.25 an hour during his week, about $1 less than regular Kaiser workers made before the strike.

Replacement workers also are provided free rooms to stay in at the plant. The rooms, in trailers, are nice, Jakubal said.

Laundry, like the rooms, is free. So is the food, which Jakubal said ranged from steaks to crab legs.

Those benefits, however, are going away. Ashe said the company plans to close down that aspect of its operations by the end of November.

"It's always been our intent to return to normal," she said. "We want to let our workers return to normal."

About 320 unionized workers are on strike at the Tacoma plant, about 3,000 out nationally. At issue are wages and working conditions.

No meetings between union and company negotiators were scheduled this week, Ashe said, adding that a bargaining session could be scheduled at any time.