The Trump administration’s move to strong-arm food processing plants into reopening amid the novel coronavirus pandemic is stretching far beyond workers in the United States. “The U.S. government has mounted a campaign to persuade Mexico to reopen many factories that were closed,” the Los Angeles Times reports, “warning that the supply chain of the North American free-trade zone could be permanently crippled if factories don’t resume production soon.”
But there appears to be little concern for Mexican workers, even when some have died after getting sick in plants owned by American companies. “’They are criminals who are only interested in their capital,’ said a worker at a factory owned by Wisconsin-based Regal Beloit that has been closed since employees walked off the job on April 15 after several of their colleagues died,” the LA Times continued. “An April 18 letter from the company to employees confirmed three suspected coronavirus deaths at the Juarez factory. Workers say five others have died since.”
Trump recently ordered U.S. food plants to keep operating when some have also been impacted by loss of workers’ lives. Prism’ Tina Vasquez reported last month that Tyson Foods has confirmed the deaths of at least six workers in Georgia and Iowa, as many workers elsewhere are sick: “Mountaire Farms has publicly confirmed 20 COVID-19 cases at two of its locations in North Carolina—including 11 cases at the company’s Siler City plant and nine cases at its Lumber Bridge location. Pilgrim’s Pride confirmed in a statement to Prism that multiple employees have tested positive for COVID-19 at ‘some’ of the company’s facilities.”
“Trump's order may well amount to a death sentence for workers in meatpacking plants, who have little choice but to continue to work to provide for their families,” CNN columnist Raul A. Reyes writes. But that’s of no concern to the impeached president, of course, because significant numbers of these workers are immigrants and people of color, the same people he doesn’t care for, as Reyes notes. “How unsurprising that the President, who has shown unprecedented cruelty and disdain for immigrants and minorities, now expects them to risk their lives so we all can have an uninterrupted food supply,” he continued.
Oh, Trump has included vital protections in his order, all right—for his corporate pals. “The order is designed in part to give companies legal cover with more liability protection in case employees catch the virus as a result of having to go to work,” The New York Times reports. There’s been a similar disregard for the lives of U.S. laborers like farm workers, who have been deemed “essential” by the federal government but have been denied even the gloves and boots they need to do their hazardous jobs safely. Now, they have to add a pandemic onto the existing dangers of their work.
Salvador, a mandarin picker from central California, told BuzzFeed News’ Hamed Aleaziz and Adolfo Flores last month that his workload has increased, which means more added risk to illness. But he says he has no other choice. “If I don’t work, my family does not eat,” he told BuzzFeed News. “If the farmworkers don’t work, then the fruits and vegetables don’t arrive.” Another worker from the region has stopped working altogether out of health concerns for her children, one of whom has asthma. “’I’m really worried,” Letitia told BuzzFeed News. “I was afraid something might happen to my son. It’s been very difficult.’”
“It’s genocide against the working class,” Teamsters Local 238 leader Jesse Case told The Guardian from Iowa, where none of the Tyson workers, the vast majority of them Latino, have reportedly been tested. Back in Mexico, a factory worker told the LA Times: “They don’t care about us.”