Adding to the toll of the coronavirus pandemic, we are beginning to see reports of impending meat shortages in the coming months. Politico notes that meat plants are overall operating at 60% of their capacity, and that stockpiles are starting to decline slightly. The reason for this is that many meatpacking facilities have been the site of coronavirus outbreaks, due not only to the close quarters in which workers operate but, more fundamentally, to a catastrophic failure of both meat processors and the U.S. government to prevent worker illness.
The Washington Post has the most in-depth story I’ve seen to date on the scope of this issue, covering failures by three major companies: Tyson Foods, JBS USA, and Smithfield Foods. Across the industry, these corporations have lied to their workers about the risks from the coronavirus, and have failed to take adequate measures to protect worker health. Many facilities simply refused to allow sick workers to go home without losing their jobs. Workers for one company were told that everyone has already had the virus, so there was no need to worry; others were told that the cold temperatures of their facility meant the virus could not survive there. Another posted a communication to employees suggesting that the U.S. government deemed it necessary that they keep working in unsafe conditions.
Again and again, the meatpacking industry put profit over human lives, in a self-destructive strategy that has both led to plant closures and endangered the food supply of the United States. The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration is complicit in this clusterfuck; while it released guidance around protective gear for workers, it also indicated it would not enforce such regulations in order not to burden companies, which amounts to doing nothing at all. OSHA has clearly failed these workers, which is not surprising given the president who oversees this agency; House investigations of its refusal to do its job are now necessary.
One clear theme of the Post article is that it came down to county health officials to clamp down on plants that suffered Covid-19 outbreaks, with the local authorities clearly aware of their responsibility for trying to prevent outbreaks that would overwhelm their health care resources. Yet prudent action by local health agencies has been insufficient in the absence of strong federal action, as 3,300 workers have fallen ill and 17 have died at more than 30 plants across the country. Many workers have in turn transmitted the virus to their families.
Not only did these companies fail to protect their workers, they are now lying about their efforts, as evidenced by the testimony of multiple workers and documentation that contradicts claims that they acted adequately in the face of the virus. Whether through incompetence, indifference to human life, or some combination of the two, these companies treated their workers not much differently than the animals they slaughter, replaceable cogs in a multi-billion dollar machine.
It was entirely predictable that the meatpacking industry would be impacted by the coronavirus, yet clearly the Trump administration did nothing to get ahead of the threat. This is a betrayal of the workers, but also for the country that relies on their labor. It is difficult to believe that the high numbers of undocumented workers in the industry has no relationship to this indifference — it is estimated that a third of them are non-citizens, a situation which has long enabled the meat industry to subject its workforce to conditions that, even before the coronavirus, were the stuff of nightmares, from unsanitary environments to hideous injuries from dangerous equipment. Both the industry and government regulators have long viewed these workers as expendable, and the coronavirus crisis has not changed this view.
The coronavirus is making many of us reconsider the essential nature of jobs many of us didn’t adequately appreciate before, from grocery clerks and Amazon fulfillment center workers to UPS delivery people and city bus drivers. The threat of mass death and the prospect of economic collapse has spurred a renewed realization of our interdependence. With the meatpacking industry in crisis, we’re learning a fresh lesson in how refusing to defend necessary workers in good times threatens us all in bad times.