April 30, 2020

Unchecked spread of COVID-19 through plants will likely kill workers and possibly consumers

Last week, Teamsters from Joint Council 28 in Washington State reported on a Tyson beef processing plant in Eastern Washington near the Tri-Cities where over 100 workers were confirmed to have COVID-19, and one worker had already succumbed to the disease. In the wake of our story, Tyson announced that they would be closing the plant in order to quarantine and test all workers as well as thoroughly disinfect the plant. The company then proceeded to issue dire warnings that “the food supply chain is breaking,” as more and more meat plants across the nation closed to slow their rampaging COVID-19 infection rates.

If the Company’s announcement was designed to incite fear, it certainly worked: on Tuesday, the Trump Administration issued an executive order forcing all meat processing plants to remain open no matter what type of outbreak is going on inside. This move would include not just the Tri-Cities Tyson meat processing plant that has been ravaged by COVID-19, but other plants across the United States that have made the news for even worse outbreaks. As if this Executive Order was not bad enough, Trump’s Labor Department also made sure to issue guidance protecting companies from liability for continuing to operate during the outbreak – and they did this on Workers’ Memorial day, a day that was about recognizing fallen workers.

What has changed in the past week in terms of worker and food safety in these plants? The answer is simple: absolutely nothing. Trump’s decision appears to have been sparked by fears that the food supply could be interrupted and Americans could be forced to find alternate sources of protein as they contend with meat shortages at the grocery store. However, this extremely short-sighted decision may ease some fears about going without steak and pork chops – but the cost will be the lives of a mostly-immigrant meatpacking workforce, as well as the potential risks to consumers who purchase and eat meat prepared in a plant riddled with coronavirus.

Given the novelty of this virus, scientists are still learning about it and how/where it is able to survive. Can it survive on meat prepared and packaged by someone with the disease? We still do not really know for sure, which is why it has been so important to try and keep those infected with COVID-19 away from our food. After all, we have already heard the horror stories of workers in the prepared foods section of grocery stores being confirmed infected with the virus. Do we really want to eat meat that comes from a plant where 10-20% or more of the workforce may be infected?

The demographics of the workforces at these plants are almost certainly a factor in Trump’s decision. Across the United States, the grueling and gruesome work at these meatpacking plants has largely been performed by immigrants, mostly from Mexico – the very group Trump has spent most of his candidacy and Presidency targeting and demonizing. It should come as no surprise that he would be willing to sacrifice their lives in order to keep the meat shelves stocked at American grocery stores. In addition to being mostly immigrant, these facilities are also mainly nonunion shops, which means these workers have precisely no one to advocate for them against management’s unrealistic expectations.

Management’s expectations are, without doubt, unrealistic. Worker protections against COVID-19 at these plants are almost nonexistent. Personal Protective Equipment, sanitation supplies, and social distancing are poorly enforced, if they exist at all. This is how the disease has been able to spread so effectively within these facilities. And of course, an immigrant nonunion workforce is unlikely to have access to good healthcare, paid sick leave, or a hefty enough paycheck to allow for unpaid time off in the event a worker becomes ill. This is a recipe for sick workers still showing up to process and pack the very meat that we bring home to our families for dinner.

We do not disagree with Tyson’s assertion that the food supply chain is breaking. In fact, we contend this situation is proof that our food supply chain has been broken for a long time. Why are Americans going hungry while livestock is being euthanized and buried uneaten? Why is the welfare of the corporate meat production companies and corporate farms more important than the lives of the actual human beings who work in these plants? And most importantly of all, why must we find ourselves at this point where we have to decide between sacrificing human lives or reducing our consumption of meat for a while?

So many things could have been done differently to avoid this moment we are facing right now. These workers could have been given PPE a long time ago, when the full danger of COVID-19 became apparent. Sick workers could have been paid to stay home instead of coming to work to spread the disease further. Unionized plants have come up with a myriad of other ways to help protect their workers from contracting the disease, as we discussed in last week’s article. Why was none of this done in the meat industry? The fact is, corporate ineptitude led these companies to lay absolutely no groundwork to help insulate themselves and their workforces from the spread of COVID-19, and now when they are faced with the harsh reality of paying the price for these poor decisions, they use fear to manipulate the federal government into bailing them out. Only this time, the bailout isn’t just going to cost taxpayer money. It’s going to cost lives.

We hope that this situation is a wakeup call for all those who feel that Unions are not necessary, and that workers do just fine without them. As we serve up an entire industry of workers, happy to sacrifice them on the altar of American-style capitalism, we plainly see just how important it is for workers to have someone fighting for them. Because right now, nobody is fighting for these workers, and it is going to get them killed. This is a disgraceful moment in American history.

Rick Hicks is President of Teamsters Joint Council 28, an organization representing 58,000 working people across 12 Teamster Local Unions in Washington State, Alaska, and the Idaho Panhandle.

Want to help fight for meat processing workers? Call your state political representatives and tell them you are wholeheartedly against Trump’s plan to force meat plants to reopen until all worker safety measures are put in place and ordered to be strictly followed. Food safety, worker safety, and community safety matter!