Rachel Maddow tonight did a section on the JBS Greeley, CO meat packing plant which reopened on Friday (April 24). The plant was closed, and was ordered to test all of its workers. However, all of its workers have not gotten the COVID-19 tests that VP Pence-on-fire promised they would get. According to Maddow, the testing was stopped after roughly ¼ of the supervisors tested positive for COVID-19. Apparently the bosses at corporate decided they didn’t like the way the numbers were starting to look, so they shut-down the testing of all employees, and reopened the plant anyway (albeit with temperature screening).
The video segment is not yet up on the MSNBC website, but there are other sources, like www.cpr.org/… This adds a bit of info, including that the April 10 order to test all employees was set aside in favor of an unpublished “new agreement,” and that not all or the employees are even being temperature screened, like maintenance workers who report to work before the screening stations are set up. Only 102 JBS employees were tested (apparently these were the managers?). Four employees have died.
According to Maddow and WaPo (See www.washingtonpost.com/… ) managers apparently encouraged workers to show up for work even while sick in a “work while sick” culture. 64% of workers who were eventually tested (because they got sick?) “worked while symptomatic and therefore were contagious to others.” Now, apparently, workers all have (surgical style?) face masks, which were not mandated until April 13, 2 days before the plant shut down). Disturbingly, but perhaps unsurprisingly, JBS seems to have lied about encouraging workers to stay at home if they had symptoms. From the WaPo article:
On March 24, according to JBS’s Bruett, educational materials were posted inside the plant, encouraging employees to stay home if they were ill and providing advice on correct hand washing and social distancing.
However, copies of the posters provided to The Post did not include instructions to workers to stay home if they had covid-19 symptoms. Such educational materials also were not posted on the company’s Facebook page until after the plant was closed. Bruett said company supervisors were given covid-19 training in mid-March and were told to encourage workers with symptoms of the virus to stay home.
On the day of the plant’s first COVID-19 detection (Marcy 26), the company handed out a free 5 lb ground beef roll to its employees as a thank you for coming to work. They have also increased worker pay by $4/hour because of the “increased hazards” the workers face.
Meanwhile, JBS sent a “cease and desist” letter to the worker’s union over media comments that the company said were “engaging in a ‘multi-faceted corporate campaign’ against the company to ‘coerce’ JBS to grant specific protocols amid the coronavirus outbreak at the Greeley plant.” See www.thedenverchannel.com/… (which also reported the death toll at the plant as 5 rather than 4).
The president of the workers’ union, Kim Cordova, said of the plant’s reopening, “I think the workers are being sacrificed...I think this could potentially be a death sentence.” Cordova’s public remarks are the reason for the “cease and desist” letter.
In the cease-and-desist letter Friday from the company, Matthew J. Lovell, the JBS USA head of labor relations, referenced Cordova's interview with Denver7, saying she discouraged employees from coming to work, a violation of the collective bargaining agreement between the plant and the union.
Lovell asked Cordova to stop the union's "corporate campaign" against JBS. If not, Lovell wrote, the company would ask a federal court for an injunction against the union, as well as money damages.
Cordova said the union's actions and her comments are "nothing more than the exercise of our Constitutional and legal rights, regardless of how you improperly characterize them."
"The JBS plant is not a feudal fiefdom, which operates at the whim of its management nobility – it can, and should, be regulated by the appropriate health and safety agencies which exist to protect the public and workers at the plant," Cordova wrote. "I would also note that your contention that we are essentially 'gagged and bound' by a provision in the CBA* discussing safety is one that you are demonstrably late in making."
*Collective Bargaining Agreement
On a personal note, I will admit that I am feeling worried about buying pre-packaged meat, given all the virus outbreaks at the meat packing plants. Fortunately, my local grocery store packages its own beef (although where that beef comes from, I can’t say). I won’t buy Tyson chicken (didn’t buy it even before the outbreaks at their plants), but I’d like to know if Perdue has had any outbreaks?
As a segue, it seems to me that right now would be a great opportunity for the veggie-based “meats” like “Beyond Burger” and “Impossible Burger” as well as lab-grown meats (chicken or beef, which do not involve animal slaughter and are more environmentally sustainable--are those publicly available yet?) to make in-roads into end-point consumer sales.
I’m not sure, but I suspect that the laboratories where lab-grown meat is made would be less prone to spreading the coronavirus, for various reasons. The down side might be fewer jobs/employees, but I bet those workers would be better paid. Anyway, to satisfy my own curiosity, I’ve included a poll below.