Mistreated Food Workers are a COVID Hotspot
Jane Mayer’s article “Back to the Jungle,” in the 20 July New Yorker, looks at the labor struggle in a Delaware poultry plant as a microcosm of how food workers in America today are at the mercy of merciless employers. The whole 9000+ article is fascinating reading, but for those who do not have time for the whole piece, I have written notes (see attachment) and a summary.
[Image from DelawareOnline].
US Poultry – Echoes of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle
Slaughtering and preparing chicken for market in the United States in the 21st century is dangerous work, with more severe injuries than coal mines and saw mills: a worker suffers dismemberment (often fingers) or an in-patient hospital stay about every other day. Only about 1/3 of the workers are unionized, compared to 2/3 of meatpackers, and increasingly firms hire contract workers to shield themselves from responsibility for worker conditions and checking immigration status. By 2019, 10 poultry companies controlled 80% of the US chicken market. Ongoing lawsuits accuse large companies of illegally conspiring to hold down wages and to fix chicken prices.
Workers, COVID, and the Trump Administration
When the pandemic struck, Trump issued an executive order to “continue operations uninterrupted” despite the danger to workers. This was justified by fears of a food shortage in the US, yet at the same time that poultry giant Tysons was stoking these fears, it was actually increasing exports of meat to China. Rather than protecting labor, the Labor Department decided to protect companies from labor by shielding them from worker lawsuits related to COVID. Workers who feared contagion had to choose between risking illness or losing their jobs.
Workers are supposed to be protected by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), both compromised by the Trump administration. OSHA is supposed to enforce federal law prohibiting employees from being subjected to “recognized hazards”. However, after receiving over 6000 COVID-related complaints, it issued only one citation by 7 July 2020. It refused to order businesses to comply with CDC guidelines for COVID-19. The guidelines themselves have been changed, apparently under pressure from business interests and the president himself. Early recommendations to isolate all workers who had come in contact with an infected individual were changed to only isolate workers with symptoms, thus allowing the pre-symptomatic workers to spread the disease inside poultry plants.
The Trump administration also used COVID as cover for allowing a speed-up in production lines long desired by the industry. Faster processing means more profit for companies, but for workers it means more injuries and less distance between workers despite the risk of infection. The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union says that 30,000 of its 1.3 million members have gotten COVID-19, 238 of whom died. These numbers do not seem particularly high – 2.3% – but are double the national rate, about 1.1% according to Washington Post figures over the weekend]. Within the Delmarva Peninsular (much of Delaware, and the Eastern Shore of Maryland and Virginia), over 2200 poultry workers were infected in April and May of this year.
“Christian Philanthropist” Abuses and Endangers Employees
In Selbyville, Delaware, poultry giant Mountaire is working to kick the union out of their plant after 42 years of representing workers there. Mountaire describes itself as the 6th largest US poultry company; with $2.3 billion in sales, double what it was in 2010. In that period, worker pay declined relative to manufacturing jobs, and Mountaire settled lawsuits for racial discrimination, for charging workers for their own protective equipment, and for letting supervisors mistreat Haitian workers by denying bathroom breaks and – I’m not making this up – throwing chicken parts at them. During the Obama administration, it had twice the number of OSHA violations per worker as Tyson and was fined for mismanaging onsite medical facilities and pressuring workers to not report injuries.
Mountaire is based in Arkansas and owned by Ronald Cameron, who inherited the firm from his father. Cameron is a right wing Christian who has given millions to the religious right, to Koch political groups, and to organizations supporting Trump’s presidential campaigns. His contribution to the Republican Governors Association helped Larry Hogan get elected governor of Maryland; Hogan then blocked legislation opposed by the poultry industry.
A Mountaire employee in Selbyville said that workers got $13/hour and a week of vacation a year; they were given COVID hazard pay of a mere $1/hour for a while but it was then cancelled in June. Contract workers have it worse. Mountaire started to give them paid sick leave during the pandemic, but only for 5 days at 60% of pay. The company did not do plant-wide testing at Selbyville till 27 May; 34 tested positive. Employees and the union point to examples of COVID being hushed up by the company and of workers pressured to stay on the job despite obvious signs of illness.
Worker Health is Public Health
Years of talking to people about those who provide us food, clothing, and shelter has given me the impression that most people don’t care very much about how those workers are treated. The good news is that the pain we allow others to suffer sometimes comes back to hurt us too. By allowing poultry and meatpacking plants to become virus hotspots, we are multiplying the disease and endangering everyone.
An article in Mother Jones shows how a comparison between the US and EU is a case study of what we should and should not be doing with essential workers.
Should: test all workers – that’s an easy one.
Should: provide sick leave, medical care, a place to isolate from family if necessary, and a living wage – hard as long as we think essential workers deserve to live in poverty.
Should: better working conditions (like enough time to go to the bathroom!) – not hard, but expensive.
Should: smaller facilities so not as many get infected at once – hard in short run, easy in long run.
Should: improve living conditions for workers outside the factories (in Germany many live in barracks that spread germs easily, don’t know about in US).
Some Good News
Virginia Poultry Workers See Victory in New COVID-19 Protection Rules
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