Worker advocates and consumers continue to pressure poultry companies to improve conditions for their employees. Perdue accepted petitions from 100,000 consumers while Tyson Foods made promises to increase wages and reduce injuries.
I can thank the Trump Administration for providing a new phrase to describe how the poultry industry distorts information about working conditions in its plants. Assertions about injury prevention and medical treatment are debunked in a new paper published in the Journal of Safety Research.
Poultry processing workers and food safety inspectors are being doused with chemicals in the name of food safety. Rep. Rosa DeLauro and colleagues urge the Secretaries of USDA, HHS, and Labor to ensure that food safety doesn’t come at the expense of worker safety.
Writing for Slate, Gabriel Thompson spent time in northwest Arkansas investigating working conditions in a Butterball turkey plant. You would be wise to disregard the poultry industry’s claims about record-low injury rates.
New Jersey’s growing temp industry is rife with labor violations, worker mistreatment; advocates in North Carolina demand safer conditions for poultry plant workers; former Wells Fargo workers sue over aggressive sales quotas that led to fraud; and an investigation into northern California’s marijuana industry finds rampant sexual abuse and assault.
Restaurant workers in California experience severe injuries and disability; OSHA pushes back against a judge’s ruling in poultry plant inspection case; Gov. Chris Christie vetoes a $15 minimum wage bill; and the women making Nike products in Vietnam often earn poverty wages and face grueling production expectations.
The EEOC alleges in a lawsuit against Wayne Farms, a poultry-processing company, that its attendance policy results in injured workers being fired. That’s a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Recent pieces address Congress’s failure to address Zika (by a pregnant Miami reporter), political parties’ different approaches to public health, pregnancy-related deaths in Texas, and more.
Farmworkers in south Texas continue to struggle 50 years after historic worker strike; Illinois governor signs Domestic Workers Bill of Rights; Samsung Electronics accused of withholding deadly chemical exposure information from workers; and OSHA fines a Tyson chicken plant after a worker loses a finger.
It sounds like malpractice to me. That’s what I’ve been thinking ever since learning how the injuries sustained by poultry workers are treated (and not treated) at the company nursing stations.