A pair of new stories, published by Vox and Mother Jones, broaden our understanding of how the coronavirus has devastated workers at meatpacking facilities around the country. As I noted a few days ago, the crowded working conditions of the operations have combined with corporate negligence to create a firestorm of Covid-19 outbreaks, with more than 3,000 workers testing positive over the past several weeks and more than 15 workers dead. Companies have closed at least 20 plants, leading to warnings of meat shortages and spurring President Trump to sign an executive order last week that the facilities remain open.
Unfortunately, although the president’s order includes the government providing protective gear and guidance for workers, there is skepticism that there will be follow through on this front. According to the Washington Post, safety experts worry that the move will circumvent local officials from being able to protect employees via plant closures, and will also interfere with other federal guidelines requiring space between workers.
An order that prioritizes keeping plants open over worker safety ignores the reason why plants have closed in the first place: because thousands of employees have been exposed to the coronavirus at their meatpacking jobs. And so this order amounts to a mandate that workers continue to risk their lives for the sake of the meat companies and the nation’s food supply. Yet, on the latter point, I have not seen anyone argue that we would see anything worse than shortages with the current regime of closures. I have also not seen any convincing arguments that we are in such desperate circumstances that companies should not be forced to do everything possible to protect worker health, including an assurance of personal protective equipment, adequate social distancing, paid time off for both sick workers and those without symptoms but in quarantine, a slowed production tempo, and, yes, closures if such measures prove insufficient to stop the spread of illness at a facility.
It is difficult to see this as anything but the president intervening heavily on the side of the meatpacking companies against workers’ health and safety rights. The Vox and Mother Jones stories I mentioned add devastating new details to the extent of these companies’ negligence and betrayal of their workers; they make for heartbreaking, infuriating reading. In light of the many accounts of employees forced to choose between working with Covid-19 or being fired, not being allowed time off to self-quarantine, and being lied to about the dangers of the production line, there is sufficient evidence available to suggest that corporations like JBS USA, Tyson Foods, and Smithfield Foods have been effectively acting in a criminal manner toward their employees. The bad faith of the president’s executive order is made clear by the lack of any accompanying call for accountability for their actions to date. You cannot read these reports and not see this as an enormous national scandal, requiring congressional investigation and likely criminal inquiries.
“The food supply chain is breaking” was the attention-grabbing statement Tyson Foods’ chairman included in a full-page newspaper ad published in newspapers last week, but a more accurate phrasing of the situation would be that it is companies like Tyson Foods themselves that have been breaking the food supply chain, by failing to take adequate measures to protect their employees from the coronavirus. Meatpacking industry assertions that worker safety is their top priority are contradicted by multiple worker accounts, not to mention the basic fact of the shockingly high number of coronavirus cases among employees. Time and again, companies and facilities dismissed worker concerns, lied to them, and treated them as disposable. The facts are shocking and enraging, and should galvanize Americans to pressure our elected representatives to hold these companies to account. These workers have risked their lives to feed us; the least we can do is help stop their bosses from working them to death.