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Friday, May 01, 2020 8:17:21 PM
“The Workers Are Being Sacrificed”: As Cases Mounted, Meatpacker JBS Kept People on Crowded Factory Floors
"Trump eased regulation in meat processing plants. Guess what."
With coronavirus outbreaks at two-thirds of the company’s beef processing plants, employees are asking, “Why didn’t they help protect us?”
Esther Honig and Ted Genoways5 hours ago
[...]
By mid-March, Rodriguez says she started noticing co-workers missing from the line. The parking lot seemed emptier than usual. According to data from the county health department, COVID-19 had already begun spreading among workers at the plant. Yet even as Colorado schools were ordered to close and the country declared a national emergency, the production line at JBS continued to run as usual.
On March 20, Rodriguez showed up for her shift at 5:45 a.m. and later that day shared lunch with her dad. As she left that afternoon, her mom called to say her dad had come home sick and gone to urgent care with a high temperature. Doctors said his symptoms were consistent with COVID-19 and advised him and the rest of the family to self-quarantine. Rodriguez says she called her supervisor to report that she’d likely been exposed. “They said, ‘But you’re not symptomatic, so you should come to work.’” If she wanted to take two weeks off to quarantine, Rodriguez says, she was told she would lose her job and would have to reapply after 90 days. “No one is forced to come to work and no one is punished for being absent for health reasons,” a JBS spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “If anyone experienced something different, that is troubling and not consistent with our culture or our policies.”
A week after visiting urgent care, Rodriguez’s father was admitted to the hospital, where he tested positive for the virus and was placed in the ICU on a ventilator. Days later, news hit the local press: The JBS plant was in the grip of a full-blown outbreak. Since then, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment has found that more than 245 workers have tested positive, and six have died. But the company has refused to offer tests of its line workers, and it reopened earlier this week—barely halfway through a two-week quarantine mandated by the health department. On Tuesday, President Trump issued an executive order to classify meatpacking plants as critical under the Defense Production Act, meaning that plants would be required to remain open. “We thank the Administration for acknowledging the important role food companies serve and ensuring that our food supply will remain resilient during these unprecedented times,” JBS wrote in a statement praising the move.
Workers fear that JBS is signaling that it intends to use the White House order as cover to continue production, even as advocates argue that protections for workers are insufficient. “All these years that my dad has given them,” Rodriguez says. “This is how they’re going to show they care?”
The JBS plant in Greeley is hardly unique. In recent weeks, there have been significant COVID-19 outbreaks at JBS’s beef processing plants in Souderton, Pennsylvania; Plainwell, Michigan; Green Bay, Wisconsin; Cactus, Texas; and Grand Island, Nebraska. Including Greeley, these account for six of the company’s nine beef plants nationwide. Similar outbreaks have hit three of its five pork processing plants. At the same time, dozens of plants owned by other companies, including Tyson Foods and Smithfield, have seen outbreaks among their workers and in surrounding communities. All told in the US, per data collected by the Food and Environment Reporting Network, at least 99 meatpacking and processed food plants have confirmed cases of COVID-19, and at least 20 meatpacking plants and five processed food plants are currently closed. At least 6,832 workers are confirmed sick and at least 25 have died.
https://www.motherjones.com/food/2020/05/meatpacking-coronavirus-workers-factory-jbs-tyson-smithfield-covid-crisis-sacrifice-outbreaks-beef/
See also:
It's neither socialistic nor socialism
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=155385744
It's a particular virulent, greedy and uncaring shade of capitalism managed, at this time, by the worst kind of leader
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=155390755
you could imagine for America.
"Trump eased regulation in meat processing plants. Guess what."
With coronavirus outbreaks at two-thirds of the company’s beef processing plants, employees are asking, “Why didn’t they help protect us?”
Esther Honig and Ted Genoways5 hours ago
[...]
By mid-March, Rodriguez says she started noticing co-workers missing from the line. The parking lot seemed emptier than usual. According to data from the county health department, COVID-19 had already begun spreading among workers at the plant. Yet even as Colorado schools were ordered to close and the country declared a national emergency, the production line at JBS continued to run as usual.
On March 20, Rodriguez showed up for her shift at 5:45 a.m. and later that day shared lunch with her dad. As she left that afternoon, her mom called to say her dad had come home sick and gone to urgent care with a high temperature. Doctors said his symptoms were consistent with COVID-19 and advised him and the rest of the family to self-quarantine. Rodriguez says she called her supervisor to report that she’d likely been exposed. “They said, ‘But you’re not symptomatic, so you should come to work.’” If she wanted to take two weeks off to quarantine, Rodriguez says, she was told she would lose her job and would have to reapply after 90 days. “No one is forced to come to work and no one is punished for being absent for health reasons,” a JBS spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “If anyone experienced something different, that is troubling and not consistent with our culture or our policies.”
A week after visiting urgent care, Rodriguez’s father was admitted to the hospital, where he tested positive for the virus and was placed in the ICU on a ventilator. Days later, news hit the local press: The JBS plant was in the grip of a full-blown outbreak. Since then, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment has found that more than 245 workers have tested positive, and six have died. But the company has refused to offer tests of its line workers, and it reopened earlier this week—barely halfway through a two-week quarantine mandated by the health department. On Tuesday, President Trump issued an executive order to classify meatpacking plants as critical under the Defense Production Act, meaning that plants would be required to remain open. “We thank the Administration for acknowledging the important role food companies serve and ensuring that our food supply will remain resilient during these unprecedented times,” JBS wrote in a statement praising the move.
Workers fear that JBS is signaling that it intends to use the White House order as cover to continue production, even as advocates argue that protections for workers are insufficient. “All these years that my dad has given them,” Rodriguez says. “This is how they’re going to show they care?”
The JBS plant in Greeley is hardly unique. In recent weeks, there have been significant COVID-19 outbreaks at JBS’s beef processing plants in Souderton, Pennsylvania; Plainwell, Michigan; Green Bay, Wisconsin; Cactus, Texas; and Grand Island, Nebraska. Including Greeley, these account for six of the company’s nine beef plants nationwide. Similar outbreaks have hit three of its five pork processing plants. At the same time, dozens of plants owned by other companies, including Tyson Foods and Smithfield, have seen outbreaks among their workers and in surrounding communities. All told in the US, per data collected by the Food and Environment Reporting Network, at least 99 meatpacking and processed food plants have confirmed cases of COVID-19, and at least 20 meatpacking plants and five processed food plants are currently closed. At least 6,832 workers are confirmed sick and at least 25 have died.
https://www.motherjones.com/food/2020/05/meatpacking-coronavirus-workers-factory-jbs-tyson-smithfield-covid-crisis-sacrifice-outbreaks-beef/
See also:
It's neither socialistic nor socialism
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=155385744
It's a particular virulent, greedy and uncaring shade of capitalism managed, at this time, by the worst kind of leader
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=155390755
you could imagine for America.
It was Plato who said, “He, O men, is the wisest, who like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing”
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