For Frontline Food Workers, Virus Rages Without Intervention
summer 2020 justice in action
Cactus, Texas - In June, Texas RioGrande Legal Aid filed a complaint with the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration to inspect the JBS meatpacking plant north of Amarillo. The company has not adequately protected its workers during the pandemic and denied their access to worker’s compensation when they contracted the virus, TRLA said in the complaint.
The situation was already dire. As of May 11, the JBS plant in Cactus, Texas, had already seen 323 workers test positive for the virus. The company was representative of a nationwide trend. Across the U.S., more than 25,000 meatpacking workers had tested positive for the coronavirus, and 92 had died, according to the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting.
The human toll has worsened in the three months since. As of August 10, an additional 9,500 workers in the U.S. had tested positive for the virus. Seventy-one more workers had died. Updated numbers for the JBS plant in Cactus were not available.
“These workers are considered essential, and they have to go to work,” said Amal Bouhabib, a staff attorney with Southern Migrant Legal Services, a TRLA program. “They live in terrible conditions, they have no protections, they get paid less than everyone else. And here they are, making sure that everyone can continue to eat.”
Initially, some things changed as a result of the spotlight. Employers agreed to test workers, provide masks, and add plastic partitions on production lines. But federal guidelines recommending social distancing practices were not followed.
“The agencies charged with enforcing these laws have dropped the ball completely during COVID,” Bouhabib said. “OSHA is supposed to take care of workers. They have made it very difficult to do that. They announced they would do no on-site inspections. They’re basically doing nothing, so that’s not really a recourse.”
Farmworkers are at a disadvantage. They are excluded categorically from many employee protections granted other workers.
Then the pandemic started, and the federal government declared these workers “essential” in March but didn’t adjust workplace rules to protect them, Bouhabib said.
To help prevent the spread of the virus among meatpacking workers, the Centers for Disease Control recommended that facilities have staggered start times for social distancing, as well as staggered shift breaks and slower production to reduce the number of workers working close to one another.
In Cactus, the JBS plant did not implement any of the guidelines, said Chris Benoit, staff attorney for TRLA.
“Workers are bunched together in locker rooms,” Benoit said. “They do have plastic partitions on the line, but they are still packed together, there’s no social distancing.”
One of TRLA’s clients worked at the JBS plant, commuting every day from Amarillo on an employer-owned bus with other workers in every seat. He fell ill, got himself tested (positive), and self-isolated in his home for more than two weeks without pay. JBS denied responsibility for the illness and refused to pay workers compensation.
These issues affect more than just the food workers, Benoit said. The virus outbreak at JBS spread beyond the plant, contributing to the ongoing epidemic.
“People should care about these workers for the same reason they care about nurses and everyone who is in a high-risk environment,” Benoit said. “What we saw in Amarillo is that these plants became the source for one of the hottest spots in Texas. It’s not an employment issue. It’s a community safety issue.”
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