Tag Archives: meatpacking

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.

How Industries Individualize Responsibility Amid the Covid-19 Epidemic

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Meatpacking plants are being devastated by Covid-19 amid orders to continue essential work, exposing the shortcomings of the institutions tasked with protecting our most vulnerable populations. This situation is a clear example of the claims made in Michael Maniates’ “Individualization,” where he discussed how institutions deflect responsibility onto the individuals they are ostensibly responsible for.

The Covid-19 epidemic seems to be an obvious example of an extraordinary circumstance requiring large institutional changes, especially as it relates to crucial industries like food production. These industries simply must continue operating to prevent food shortages. At the same time, however, workers in meatpacking plants tend to belong to vulnerable populations including the elderly and undocumented immigrants with no health insurance. Thus we should be seeing major operational changes to these facilities, such as the universal adoption of strict safety practices, or additional financial support for those who cannot work.

Photo by Andy Cross/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images.

Instead, both the government and the meatpacking facilities have externalized costs onto their workers while absolving themselves of any responsibility. The CDC and OSHA have issued guidelines to the facilities, but rather than recommending a productive solution which could be costly to the company such as mandatory testing or installing distancing barriers, they recommended better communication and wearing masks; plus, none of their guidelines are compulsory but are unenforced recommendations. The facilities, in turn, did not institute actual policy changes either, though they now “offer access” to masks for employees who request them. More egregious is the fact that any worker who wishes to quarantine is required to take unpaid leave and risk getting fired. This is a perfect example of institutions continually pushing responsibilities further down the line until it reaches their most vulnerable members, and it exemplifies the need for legitimate structural change if we wish to solve our most pressing issues.

Original article at https://thefern.org/2020/05/the-workers-are-being-sacrificed-as-cases-mounted-meatpacker-jbs-kept-people-on-crowded-factory-floors/