UPI, January 26, 2005, Wednesday

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UPI

January 26, 2005 Wednesday 4:51 PM EST

HEADLINE: Analysis: Is meatpacking a 'jungle'?

BYLINE: AL SWANSON

DATELINE: CHICAGO, Jan. 26

BODY:
President Teddy Roosevelt supposedly threw his breakfast sausages out a window after reading Upton Sinclair's book "The Jungle," which exposed corruption and abuses in the meatpacking industry at the turn of the century.
One hundred years later the American Meat Institute, an industry trade group, finds itself denying a scathing report alleging "systematic human rights violations" at U.S. meat and poultry plants.
A 175-page report, "Blood, Sweat, and Fear: Workers' Rights in U.S. Meat and Poultry plants," released by Human Rights Watch Tuesday examined beef packing in Nebraska, hog slaughtering in North Carolina and chicken processing in Arkansas and reported unnecessarily hazardous work conditions and exploitation of immigrant labor.
The report by the privately funded human-rights organization accused large meat companies of using intimidation, reprisals, threats and fear of deportation to take advantage of immigrant workers -- calling working conditions a violation of basic human rights.
American Meat Institute President and Chief Executive Officer J. Patrick Boyle said the report was so far off the mark he would need 175 pages to correct the "falsehoods and baseless claims."
"Meat packing is the most dangerous factory job in America," said Lance Compa, the report's author who teaches labor and industrial relations at Cornell University. "Dangerous conditions are cheaper for companies -- and the government does next to nothing."
The report used three plants operated by Omaha-based Nebraska Beef Ltd., Smithfield Foods pork plant in Tar Heel, N.C., and a Tyson Foods poultry plant in Arkansas as case studies to show how the increased speed of production, close-quarter working conditions, poor training and insufficient safety programs have made meat processing so hazardous.
Tyson, the world's largest processor of chicken, beef and pork, released a worker's "Team Member Bill of Rights" one day before the Human Rights Watch report. The bill promised the right to a safe, non-discriminatory workplace, fair compensation and the right to organize and bargain collectively for Tyson's 114,000 employees.
Tyson Foods Chairman and CEO John Tyson said the bill of rights "reinforces the practices we've long supported and communicated at our plants." U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns helped develop a similar Meatpacking Industry Bill of Rights for Nebraska plants when he was governor in 2000.
Human Rights Watch says conditions at some plants remain horrendous.
"On each work shift workers made up to 30,000 hard-cutting motions with sharp knives, causing massive repetitive motion injuries and frequent lacerations," Human Rights Watch said. The report said workers often failed to receive compensation for workplace injuries because of companies' delay, denial or failure to report injuries and that workers who file claims faced retaliation.
"A century after Upton Sinclair wrote 'The Jungle,' workers in the meatpacking industry still face serious injuries," said Jamie Fellner, director of the U.S. Program at Human Rights Watch. "Public agencies try to protect consumers from tainted meat, but do little to protect workers from unsafe conditions."
Sinclair's "The Jungle" described hopeless living and working conditions of a family of Lithuanian immigrants in the graft-ridden Chicago stockyards at the end of the 19th century. Public outrage after the book was published led to passage of the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906.
In the 21st century immigrants in meat-processing plants are more likely to be from Mexico and Central and Latin America.
The report said Smithfield Foods fired union supporters, threatened to close the North Carolina plant and stationed police at plant gates during a union election in 1997. Smithfield appealed after the National Labor Relations Board ordered a new election and created an internal company security force in 2000.
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney praised Human Rights Watch for opening a window on the meatpacking industry.
"Meatpacking workers not only do some of the most dangerous work in America, but they are also systematically denied basic protections and rights when it comes to health and safety, immigrant workers' rights, workers' compensation and the freedom to form a union to lift their lives," Sweeney said. "Working at breakneck speeds in the extremely dangerous and dirty work of beef, pork and poultry processing, meatpacking workers experience extraordinarily high rates of injury and death on the job."
The report recommended uniform rules including ergonomics standards to protect workplace health and safety, workers' compensation benefits, enforcement of existing labor law to bring it into compliance with international standards, enactment of the Employee Free Choice Act and federal legislation to protect workers when they attempt to organize.
"It's especially frightening for those of us from Central America. Where we come from, the police shoot trade unionists," a pork-plant worker from El Salvador told researchers.
The American Meat Institute denied meatpacking had extraordinarily high rates of injury or that injuries were underreported.
The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which monitors workplace safety, has not had a significant complaint against a meatpacker for decades, AMI's Boyle said in a statement.
He said the speed of the line at meat plants monitored by the USDA's Food and Safety Inspection Service had not changed appreciably in 15 years. "We have a strong enforcement program and a strong compliance assistance program," OSHA's director of enforcement told The New York Times.
AMI said the report intentionally mislead readers and cited the meatpacking industry as a leader in U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service efforts to stop undocumented immigrants from working illegally in the United States.
"The speed of the lines, the pace of the cutting motions, the force that is required to cut through tissue and sinew and muscle and so on is really punishing," said Compa, a labor-rights researcher. "Our credibility is in the details, which show the systematic violations of human rights in this industry."
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