Tag Archives: food workers

For Essential Food Processing Workers, “Thank You” Won’t Be Enough

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When your health and possibly your life are on the line, a mere “thank you” from your employer won’t cut it. In an excellent blog post, Gregory Stine (gstine9) cites an article from The Fern reporting that as of May 1st, there have been 6,832 confirmed cases of coronavirus and at least 25 deaths among meatpacking and food processing workers across the country. This leaves me to wonder, is thousands of workers getting sick a business expense? Or did their employers make the age-old mistake of valuing profits over people, deciding that the costs of worker protections were simply too high. The question now – will they learn their lesson?

Gregory did a great job tying in what Michael Maniates’ piece, “Individualization”, taught us about the way in which large employers deflect responsibility for their own mistakes back onto the workers who suffer those mistakes’ consequences. This phenomenon has been especially evident during the pandemic. The New York Times reported how in a Tyson Foods pork plant that had over 1,000 confirmed cases, Tyson named “worker absenteeism” as a reason for having to temporarily shut down production, failing to recognize how their own practices had made going to work too dangerous for many of their workers.

A Tyson Foods factory in Waterloo, Iowa

A Tyson Foods factory in Waterloo, Iowa (Daniel Acker for The New York Times)

In Raj Patel’s “The Color of Food”, it was reported that food processing and meatpacking facilities across the country employ people of color at a disproportionate rate to the national population, as does every other sector of the food industry. Per the Food Workers Alliance, as well as being some of the most dangerous, 5 of the 8 lowest paying jobs in America are in the food system.

workers at a Tyson poultry plant in Georgia

workers at a Tyson poultry plant in Georgia (Tyson/AP)

Gregory’s post emphasizes the pressing need for structural change that the pandemic has only helped illuminate. When the dust settles, will employers continue to disregard health concerns in the name of profits or will this mark the start of a new age of food worker safety and empowerment.

A Response to “‘Essential Workers’: Heroes or a Sacrifice to Capitalism”

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Coming across “‘Essential Workers’: Heroes or a Sacrifice to Capitalism” reinforced many of my frustrations regarding the valoric framing of laborers during the coronavirus pandemic. As more awareness campaigns, often celebrity-fueled, clap from screen to screen in viral transmission, people embedded within the linkages of our global food chain work to ensure the survival of themselves and those who depend on this vast network, not out of charity, but because that’s the way things are. These are real people with a real capacity for exhaustion, illness, and death- not some Marvel character that can recalibrate their cellular composition when compromised. The use of superhero imagery during this time of crisis to encourage productivity and decrease strike sentiment among food workers whose rights are consistently trampled is not surprising, as it has often been used to normalize and increase citizen engagement in the military industrial complex.


In reading the authored recounting of the Mexican Farm Labor Program Act, I am reminded that the systematic legacy of slavery in America has not yet dissapated, but rather, manifested into more obscured, diverse forms (Yes! Magazine). The cultural enclaves we find doting the outskirts of a pricey Seattle, and the pages of our history books likewise, are not out of choice, but a historical attempt by many immigration quotas to ‘cultivate’ a certain workforce with eugenic-like intent, preying on those whose lives have been destabilized in the industrial rat race to the bottom. We live at an ironic intersection, where the wealthiest of individuals are able to buy back the pastoral fantasy that the likes of Earl Butz’ so eagerly destroyed, while those burdened with the task of feeding an ever-growing urban population work to ensure the economic mobility of their children (GRAIN). Rightfully, this post questions the performative support offered by individual actors with real political and economic influence, much like many of us have questioned the performativity of our own green consumer choices within this class; it’s the easiest way to cope in an infrastructure which abhorrently lags behind the needs of the populace. If history taught us anything, it’s that, every once and awhile, a little civil disobedience is necessary, and that efficient industry and equitable economic distribution puts food on the table (not instagram montages).