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Compilation/Tours
Thousands of workers fell ill, meat processing plants were forced to close, and food supply was in jeopardy.
In late March, Rafael Benjamin's family begged him to stay at home and not go to work, even if he would be dismissed by the company. He agreed, but said he would wait until after April 10. On that day, he worked at Cargill Pig Beef Processing Plant in Hazelton, Pennsylvania for exactly 17 years, which was also an important milestone for him to receive pension when he retired in October.
Therefore, Benjamin, 64, chose to continue working. He is the second shift worker in the factory, with an hourly salary of 15.35 dollars. Around him, colleagues fell ill one after another; Employees whispered that it was COVID-19. The supervisors came out to clarify the fact that it was not COVID-19 and told the workers not to discuss in private who might be infected with the virus. But soon after, COVID-19 swept the whole department. By April 7, according to the Workers' Federation - United Food International Workers' Federation, 130 of the 900 workers in the factory had tested positive for the virus. However, neither Cargill nor local officials disclosed any data. In the case of opaque information, Benjamin is still working, and his anxiety is getting worse day by day.
In March, the virus has quietly spread in the meat and poultry industry in the United States. Workers in huge slaughterhouses and packaging factories bring the virus to production lines and dressing rooms, and then to their own homes. Factory operation began to slow down or idle. The impact of the virus on workers and the national food supply did not emerge until this time.
In the middle of March, panic buying has been reported. President Trump and other federal government officials are trying to convince the public that the food supply is stable. "You don't have to buy a lot of things at once," President Trump told his American people on March 15, "Take it easy." The factory worked overtime to meet the surging demand. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue delivered a speech on April 15: "In the United States, we have prepared enough food for everyone."
However, every time he went to work, Benjamin saw a different picture. Benjamin is a quiet and healthy person, who does not easily reveal his fear. But in the daily conversation with his three adult children, he confessed that he was afraid of getting sick. On March 25, one of his daughters sent him a mask to wear at work. In the factory, Benjamin operates the loading equipment near the entrance and is often the first person to greet other colleagues who come to work. "He has always been respected by everyone," said a worker on the same shift. Two days later, Benjamin told his children that his boss asked him to take off his mask because he had caused unnecessary panic to the workers.
On Saturday, April 4, Benjamin called for sick leave. He told his family that so few people came to work yesterday that he had to do the work of three people alone. On Monday, his cough and fever worsened. The next morning, he hardly moved. An ambulance took him to the hospital.
During Benjamin's hospitalization, Cargill closed the processing plant in Hazelton, disinfected the plant comprehensively, installed barriers between workstations, and gave employees rest time to recover. That weekend, the labor union said 164 workers had been infected with the virus. The local testing center has insufficient materials and refused to do virus testing for most Cargill employees. They were told that if you work in a meat packaging factory, you will default to a positive virus test.
On April 10, the 17th anniversary of his work, Benjamin had already lived in the intensive care unit and used a ventilator. On April 19, Benjamin died. On the day after his death, the factory resumed operation after two weeks of disinfection.
The failure of the meat processing industry to protect its workers against the epidemic triggered the most severe meat supply crisis in the United States since World War II. According to the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 115 meat and poultry processing plants in the United States have reported COVID-19 infection cases in recent weeks. 1% of the industry's workforce - about 5000 workers - has been confirmed, including 20 deaths. The epidemic was so serious that at least 18 factories were closed. Will Sawyer, chief economist of Agricultural Lending Bank CoBank, said that in April, the production capacity of beef and pork in the United States fell by about 40%. Sawyer predicted that by Memorial Day, meat products in grocery stores will be reduced by 30%, while prices will rise by 20% year on year.
Worker casualties. (red: number of confirmed workers; black: total number of workers in the factory with confirmed cases) At the cost of workers' lives
America's largest meat processor Tyson Foods The company was also not spared from the diagnosis and death of workers, and closed at least six major processing plants. On April 26, Tyson Foods advertised in national newspapers that "the food supply chain is falling apart". Two days later, President Trump officially listed American meat processing plants as key infrastructure to prevent state and local health agencies from closing these plants due to illness and death. At the same time, the government promised to provide additional protective equipment for factory workers.
After the issuance of the decree, the United States Department of Labor issued another statement, saying that if workers sue employers for COVID-19 risks, the department will consider supporting employers as long as employers comply with the pandemic standards issued by the federal government. The processors thanked the President for his help through their trade association, the North American Meat Institute. Labor advocates said that under President Trump's executive order, the situation of meat processing workers would be worse.
Now, it is entirely up to meat processing companies to adapt to the impact of the epidemic while maintaining production and workers' health, and these companies have less responsibility than before. "At present, we are still exploring how to balance the relationship between the physical and mental health of factory workers and administrative orders," David MacLennan, Chairman and CEO of Cargill, said in an interview on April 28.
Meat workers and their communities used to have little trust in processing companies, but now they are even more distrustful of these companies. "We didn't know how bad the situation was until we went to the hospital," said Larry, Benjamin's son, a soldier in Goldenberg, Georgia. "If we had known that the situation was so serious, he would never go back to work."
The cold, humid environment and crowded workplaces of meat product packaging factories make it particularly difficult to control infectious diseases. But it is not impossible to control. Europe pays more attention to labor protection than the United States, where most of the factories are smaller and more automated, and the meat industry has been able to avoid outbreaks. Danish Crown A/S, a large pork producer, has employees infected with COVID-19, but according to the company spokesman, the company has avoided a wide range of virus infection by taking strict satellite measures. Spain is the country with the most confirmed cases after the United States. Goikoa of Spain said that during the pandemic, the company's factories were still operating at full capacity. The UK has the fourth highest number of confirmed cases and the second highest number of deaths in the world. Nick Allen, CEO of the British Meat Processors Association, said that factory closures had been minimized by implementing strict social distance. He said that the police should keep a social distance from workers outside the factory.
There are exceptions in the United States. Sanderson Farms Inc., the third largest poultry producer, has 13 factories in the southern United States, employing a total of 17000 employees, of whom about 100 workers tested positive for the virus. In late March, Sanderson Farm realized that there were signs of an epidemic outbreak in Dorti County, Georgia. The company has 1400 employees in its factory in Moltry, which is close to Dorti County. Therefore, the company decided to let more than 400 workers go home and isolate themselves for two weeks, regardless of whether they have symptoms, and pay their salaries as usual. Although the speed of the production line was reduced by 15%, the factory was able to avoid large-scale infection, facility closure and even other worse results. None of the workers from Doherty County tested positive for the virus, and no worker at Sanderson Farm died of the virus.
Mike Cockrell, the company's chief financial officer, said that the company expected chicken production in this fiscal year to be 4% less than that estimated before the pandemic. However, "no one asked what the cost of protecting workers was," he said. "When everything is over, we will count these data together."
Cooks Venture is a small manufacturer headquartered in Arkansas, which sells broilers raised on farms directly to consumers. Matthew Wadiak, founder and CEO of Cooks Venture, said that the health and well-being of meat packaging workers is essentially a socio-economic issue. The company's processing plant in Oklahoma has 200 workers, none of whom has been diagnosed. One of the reasons is that at the beginning of the pandemic, the company has provided many protective equipment for workers and relocated the factory to disperse workers. But Vadiak believes that the deeper reason should be that the company gives better benefits. The income of entry-level employees of the company is 20% higher than the average level of other poultry workers in Oklahoma, which is enough for them to buy more spacious houses. If you live in a group of people - as many meat processors do - it's almost impossible to maintain social distance.
"Americans are eager to buy more and more cheap food, which is at the cost of people's lives," Wadiak said. "If we are willing to pay 25-50 cents more for each pound of meat, wouldn't it be good for workers to earn a living?"
It's just that this is not something that the industry will often think about. The injury rate of meat processing workers is twice that of other manufacturing workers in the United States, and the risk of occupational diseases is 15 times the national average. Meat factory workers across North America say managers treat them like disposable parts. On the outskirts of Calgary, Cargill's High River slaughterhouse has 2200 beef processing workers. Among them, 900 people were infected with COVID-19, and one died. The management is purchasing N95 masks and plastic protective masks for the factory. However, the workers said that it was several weeks ago that they last got the paper mask and the cloth mask. Dan Sullivan, a spokesman for Cargill, said that once the purchase was in place, masks would be distributed to all employees immediately.
Meat workers working with diseases
JBS-USA has a beef factory in Carcotes, Texas, which employs more than 3000 people. Three workers in the factory said that the company had never told them that a colleague suspected of being infected with COVID-19 asked for sick leave, and the truth was not known until the colleague's virus test results came out and were positive nine days later. But at that time, many workers in the factory had fallen ill. However, more than a week later, the factory manager still denied the seriousness of the outbreak in the factory and told the sick workers not to discuss their diagnosis privately.
Anthony Germain is not an employee of JBS-USA, but his wife is. He said that on April 5, his wife suddenly had a high fever. (In order to protect his wife and other family members from losing their jobs in the factory, German asked not to reveal his wife's identity.) A few days later, German's wife still vomited from time to time, but the fever has subsided. Therefore, a JBS nurse told her that she could go back to the factory to work, Germain recalled. On April 10, his wife had a virus test, and the result was positive. A factory director then called to tell Germain's wife not to talk about her diagnosis with others. Germain said that he was angry at the factory's flagrant violation of epidemic management when he heard the phone call.
"Fuck him, I won't keep secrets for them," Germain said. "They don't want to cause fear and panic in the factory, but the tension is spreading. These things should not be hidden." Nikki Richardson, a spokeswoman for JBS-USA, said that the company didn't ask any employees to keep silent about COVID-19, The company will also notify everyone in time when the employee is diagnosed. She also said that the company let employees with symptoms go home to rest, and never required any employees to work with diseases.
The Texas Health Department said that 243 confirmed cases of COVID-19 were related to the Cacotes factory, making the suburbs of Moore County the hardest hit area of the epidemic in the state. On Easter Day, April 12, Juan Manuel Jaime, 28, died of complications of COVID-19. A total of two workers in the factory died of COVID-19, and Khaimi was one of them. His aunt Sandra Guzman said that Khaimi had worked in the JBS factory for nearly two weeks because his supervisor refused to let him see a doctor and asked him to continue working. After work on Good Friday, his parents found him lying in bed on Saturday night, unconscious. Four hours later, Haimi died when he was transferred to the intensive care unit in Amarillo, Texas. After the death of Khaimi, his parents were diagnosed one after another, and his father was hospitalized for a week. Richardson said that JBS did not know that Haimi was infected with COVID-19 until he died. The factory has also taken fever screening measures to increase social distance and provide more protective equipment for workers.
Hazelton has a population of only 30000 and more than 1000 confirmed cases, which is one of the cities with the highest per capita infection rate in the world - twice that of New York City and more than 12 times that of Pennsylvania as a whole. Cargill is not solely responsible for the Hazelton epidemic. Several warehouses and processing facilities nearby, including Mission Foods' corn cake processing plant and Amazon The COVID-19 epidemic also broke out in a distribution center of COVID-19.
Hazelton is 130 miles west of New York. After a long period of economic recession, in 2000, Hazelton used attractive tax relief policies to attract Cargill to settle here. Cargill, headquartered in Minneapolis, is the world's largest agricultural products trader and the largest private company in the United States. In 2019, the company announced revenue of $113.5 billion and net profit of $2.6 billion. Cargill's meat products division has 36 factories in the United States and Canada with 28000 employees. The Hazelton factory mainly processes beef and pork into ready to sell packaged meat, and then delivers it to Wal-Mart And other East Coast stores.
Cargill's meat processing factory in Hazelton soon became the largest private employer in the region. The low skilled labor force of the factory mainly came from local Dominican families, such as Benjamin's family. Many of them moved to Hazelton from New York and New Jersey. From 2000 to 2010, the Hispanic population in the region increased sevenfold, from 37% to more than 60%. In the factory, the unionized workers can earn 500 to 700 dollars a week, which is equal to the industry average, plus overtime pay, health and vacation benefits, enough to live a decent life in Hazelton.
Since the middle of March, Cargill has not disclosed any information when the virus has ravaged the factory and Hazelton, even though panic continues to spread throughout the city. The silence of the company makes people more and more uneasy. More and more healthy employees choose to stay at home instead of going to work.
"Why did the factory have 130 confirmed cases without telling anyone? Who made the decision?" asked Robert Curry, the co-founder of the Hazelton integration project. "Where is the moral responsibility?"
Sullivan said that Cargill has always truthfully told local health officials and supervisors about the confirmed cases in the factory. He said that the company had implemented fever screening measures and other "best measures" to protect workers in its factories in North America very early after accumulating anti epidemic experience in China. Aaron Humes, the general manager of the factory, said that in Hazelton, Cargill had been keeping a social distance from workers and employees since March 3, and had taken other preventive measures. However, according to interviews with 32 workers, supervisors and nurses underestimated the danger of the virus, told employees with symptoms but no fever to take paracetamol and continue working, and warned them not to discuss privately why some colleagues left the production line.
At least 10 workers said that their supervisors or medical staff still let them return to the production line to continue working after they reported physical discomfort. An old employee who claimed to be Anna Bell and has worked at Cargill for eight years said that she had been working with illness for the whole week of March 16. She said that the head of the beef department ignored her physical discomfort, and the factory nurse told her to go back to work after giving her paracetamol, because her temperature was normal. On one occasion, Annabel said that she also overheard her supervisor complaining to the nurse that he was "bored" by the fact that employees were always complaining about their discomfort. Later, Annabel was too weak to stand up, but she still kept working because she didn't want to leave a bad record of absenteeism on her scorecard. "Every time I cough, there are other colleagues in front of me and beside me," Annabel said. She had a virus test on March 24 and the result was positive, "so my colleagues were not spared."
Holmes said that on March 25, two days after the factory announced the first confirmed case, the factory began to screen workers with symptoms. Benjamin's son said that on April 3 (the last day of Benjamin's work), when Benjamin arrived at the factory, he told the nurse at the door that he had a dry cough and felt a little comfortable. But his temperature was below 38 ℃, so the nurse let him in. Benjamin is not the only worker required to take off the mask. The other three workers also said that they heard the supervisor say that they were not allowed to wear masks. The reasons vary - some say only patients should wear masks; Others said that masks were in short supply and priority was given to medical workers; Benjamin was told that wearing a mask would cause others to feel uneasy.
Sullivan said that Cargill had "clearly" told employees that if they were sick or had contact with COVID-19 patients, they could not come to the factory to work. The company will not punish employees who are absent from work without reason; The company will also provide 80 hours of paid leave for employees who cannot work due to the epidemic. Holmes said he could not confirm whether Benjamin and anyone else had been told not to wear masks. "I don't know who told him that," Holmes said. He also said that Cargill headquarters formulated safety instructions according to the recommendations of the CDC, and the factory also fully complied with the instructions.
CDC did not issue specific recommendations on wearing masks for food and other key infrastructure companies before April. Since the 2009 swine flu, the pandemic guidance provided by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration for employers has not changed; On March 9, in response to the COVID-19 epidemic, the Administration issued a new guidance: employers should provide masks for employees to "limit the transmission of respiratory secretions of suspected patients". Homs said that Cargill began distributing masks at its factory in Hazelton on April 3, 12 days before the Pennsylvania Health Department forced workers to wear masks. He said, "We have always been ahead of the epidemic."
Recently, the second worker died. Apparently, he was infected before the factory closed. Since the factory was put into operation again on April 20, workers have worn masks and the production line has been equipped with plexiglass screens to isolate employees from each other. Cargill measures the temperature of employees twice a day. The nurse will follow up the employees whose temperature exceeds 37.7 ℃ and ask them some health questions.
Since the outbreak, the Hazelton factory has not yet been inspected by the government. Like other factories nearby, rumors about various problems spread widely. Factory employees also flocked to local hospitals. After waiting for a month, no inspectors from the federal government or the state government appeared. Local officials formed a regional working group to carry out the inspection work. The local inspectors carried out 138 inspections in April - but did not visit Cargill's factory because the factory was closed in that half month. Dan Guydish, executive director of the Mountain Council of Governmens, a subsidiary of the Greater Hazelton Chamber of Commerce, said that when the factory reopened on April 20, local inspectors were very surprised. However, Gadish said that after the factory reopened, they did not receive any complaint 。 Sullivan said that Cargill is actively cooperating with state and local officials and the business community to ensure the safety of workers and the whole city of Hazelton.
The machine will not be infected with COVID-19
Except Argentina, the per capita consumption of meat products of Americans is higher than that of any other developed country, 50% more than that of Canadians, and more than twice the per capita consumption of meat products of the European Union. One reason is that the cost of industrialized agriculture, meat and poultry in the United States is at least 20% lower than that in most European countries. "Big companies compete to provide the cheapest meat products," said Vadiyak of Cooks Venture
The closure of processing plants led to soaring meat prices. The wholesale price of beef hit a record high on May 4, twice the price in February. Pork prices hit the highest level since 2014. Bob Brown, an independent market consultant in Edmund, Oklahoma, estimated that the supply of meat products in the United States fell by 28% in seven weeks, equivalent to 500 million pounds less. Some pig farms and poultry keepers have to euthanize pigs and chickens instead of keeping these animals waiting for the slaughterhouses to open - God knows what will happen to these slaughterhouses again. Heather Jones, an equity analyst, said: "The protein market is undoubtedly the most unstable and unpredictable market I have ever seen."
Trump's administrative order may keep the factory running, but it cannot force sick or frightened workers back to the production line. Agriculture Minister Perdue said on April 30 that even if the factory resumed operation, the production shortage would continue to be as high as 15%. Over the years, the slaughterhouse has been trying to persuade legislators to allow them to speed up the operation of the production line, but it has been resisted by labor advocates, who believe that this is too dangerous, and also by food safety experts. Their reason is that accelerating production will lead to more unhealthy animals being slaughtered. Today, these abattoirs will probably have to slow down production in the coming months and possibly years, because in order to increase the distance between workers, the number of workers in the workplace can only be reduced. Livestock farmers may have to continue to reduce their livestock so as to maintain higher meat prices.
For now, compliance with higher safety standards will help meat companies keep their factories running. But if you are a worker, you can't help wondering whether these preventive measures will continue to exist after the epidemic has passed when your health will not affect the people around you? What will happen later?
Maybe robots will appear. Industry experts said that after experiencing the crisis, meat companies are likely to make a decision to solve the labor problem once and for all through automation. Steve Meyer, an economist in Ames, Iowa, said: "Previously, we said that machines do not need to rest. Now, I'm afraid it will be changed to that machines will not be infected with COVID-19."
