[Mb-civic] Meatpacking's Human Toll - Lance Compa and Jamie Fellner - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

Meatpacking's Human Toll

By Lance Compa and Jamie Fellner
Wednesday, August 3, 2005; Page A19

Working conditions in U.S. meat and poultry plants should trouble the 
conscience of every American who eats beef, pork or chicken.

Dispatching the nonstop tide of animals and birds arriving on plant 
"kill floors" and "live hang" areas has always been hazardous and 
exhausting labor. Turning an 800-pound animal (or even a five-pound 
fowl) into products for supermarkets or fast-food restaurants is, by its 
nature, demanding physical labor in bloody, greasy surroundings.

But meatpacking and poultry workers face more than hard work in tough 
settings. They perform the most dangerous factory jobs in the country. 
U.S. meat and poultry employers put workers at predictable risk of 
serious physical injury even though the means to avoid such injury are 
known and feasible. In doing so, they violate the right of workers to a 
safe place of employment.

"Faster, faster, get that product out the door!" is the industry byword. 
The results are cuts, amputations, skin disease, permanent arm and 
shoulder damage, and even death from the force of repeated hard cutting 
motions. When injured employees seek workers' compensation claims for 
their juries, they are told, "You got hurt at home, not on the job."

<>The workers who face these hazards are, increasingly, immigrants, most 
from Mexico and Central America but also from many other parts of the 
world. Companies exploit their vulnerabilities: limited English skills; 
uncertainty about their rights; alarm about their immigration status if 
they are undocumented workers.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/02/AR2005080201936.html 

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