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Food Worker Organizations File USDA Civil Rights Complaint Against Meatpackers for Exposing Workers of Color to COVID-19

Last week, a group of organizations representing meatpacking workers filed a civil rights complaint with the USDA against dominant meatpackers. The Title VI Civil Rights Act complaint alleges that Tyson Foods’ and JBS’s response to COVID-19 had a disproportionately harmful, disparate impact on their employees of color.

The corporations rejected guidance from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to limit the spread of COVID-19 among frontline plant workers, who are predominantly Latino, Black, and Asian, while the predominantly white managers at these corporations were able to work from home or social distance and did not face the same risks, the complaint says.

The filing comes after more than 120 organizations, including several of the complainants, targeted Tyson Foods with letters and petitions to improve worker protections. Tyson plants are tied to the largest number of reported COVID-19 outbreaks among meatpackers, with more than 8,800 associated cases. Advocates also called for longer-term reforms to deconcentrate large meatpackers’ power.

“This degree of exploitation is only possible because of the consolidation of the industry,” said Navina Khanna, executive director of the HEAL Food Alliance, in a statement. “A handful of companies control a majority of the market, and they are literally writing the rules around worker protections.”

COVID-19 cases among meatpacking and food plant workers continue to climb, up from 10,000 cases in early May to more than 40,000 today. Almost all those harmed are people of color: 87% of meatpacking workers who have contracted COVID-19 identified as Latino, Black, or Asian, according to CDC data released last week.

Meatpacking workers spend long hours working shoulder to shoulder indoors, which puts them at exceptional risk of contracting and spreading COVID-19. Decades of union busting, corporate consolidation, and deregulation have also exacerbated safety hazards in meatpacking plants, including increased line speeds and putting workers closer together.

A Tyson spokesperson told Food & Power that “our top priority is the health and safety of all our team members, their families, and the communities where our plants are located. We’ve transformed the way our plants operate to protect our team members.”

Tyson and JBS have implemented symptom checks, increased sanitation, mandatory face coverings, and plexiglass barriers in their plants, among other changes. Tyson also conducted plantwide testing at some locations.

But few plants have reconfigured for a minimum of six feet between workers, because this requires slowing the line or decreasing processing capacity, which hurts the corporations’ bottom lines. Of the plants that recently reported information to the CDC, none mandated six feet of space between workers on the line. However, that could change, thanks to a recent executive order in Michigan mandating social distancing in plants and a bill introduced in the House mandating slower line speeds.

In addition, packers offer insufficient paid sick leave or have punitive attendance policies that discourage workers from taking time off, pushing them to work while sick or recovering.

The complaint, filed by Public Justice on behalf of six organizations representing food chain workers and allied causes, alleges that Tyson Foods and JBS reacted to COVID-19 in ways that disproportionately put their employees of color at risk, violating the Civil Rights Act of 1964’s provision barring “programs and activities” that receive federal funds from discriminating on the basis of race, color, or country of origin. Tyson and JBS together have received more than $150 million in USDA contracts in 2020.

The corporations rejected social distancing and other federally recommended safety guidelines to protect workers on the slaughterhouse floor, the complaint says. People of color are overrepresented on the processing line; 70% of frontline meatpacking workers are Latino, Black, or Asian, compared to about 29% of all U.S workers.

At the same time, predominantly white managers for Tyson and JBS were able to work from home, practice social distancing, and receive protective equipment. The complaint found that 58% of JBS salaried employees and 73% of Tyson salaried employees were white, compared to 63% of all U.S. workers.

“Tyson and JBS have both created the conditions for people to feel like it’s OK to hire people of color to do specific jobs versus hiring white people to do a completely different set of jobs,” Jose Oliva, campaign director for the HEAL Food Alliance, told Food & Power. “That is discrimination; that is exactly how you create the conditions for treating people of color differently without explicitly saying it.” Oliva also adds that the systemic racism that limits opportunities for people of color drives such demographic disparities in the meatpacking workforce.

In addition to safety disparities among largely white managers and largely Black and Brown frontline workers, the complaint points to recent CDC findings that meatpacking workers of color are both more likely to contract COVID-19 and more likely to die or become hospitalized, compared to white meatpacking workers.

Of the meatpacking workers in 21 states that recently shared data with the CDC, nearly 40% were white, 30% were Latino, 25% were Black, and 6% were Asian. However, Latino meatpacking workers represented 56% of all reported COVID-19 cases, while white workers represented 13% of cases, Black workers 19%, and Asian workers 12%. These findings suggest that Latino and Asian workers made up a disproportionate number of meatpacking COVID-19 cases. Meanwhile, Black and Latino people are nearly five times more likely to be hospitalized for COVID-19 complications than white people, according to the CDC.

Leading up to the filing, more than 120 organizations, including several of the complainants, signed a letter sent to Tyson’s largest shareholders, urging the corporation to implement stronger safety protections including paid leave, daily testing, personal protective equipment, and physical distancing within plants operating at slower speeds.

Oliva says coalition members have heard from at least one of Tyson’s major shareholders, AQR Capital Management, which expressed interest in the coalition’s concerns.

Organizations also stood behind the Arkansas-based poultry workers’ organization Venceremos in its effort to have the governor of Arkansas close all poultry plants where workers have tested positive for COVID-19.

Finally, several participants urged the Senate to pass the Heroes Act, which would mandate emergency safety standards for essential workers. Oliva says this is important because meatpacking workers report highly varied protections among plants.

In the long term, Oliva said that HEAL also wants to see policies that deconcentrate dominant meatpackers’ economic, political, and socio-cultural power over workers and policymakers.  “They need to be broken up,” he says.

Disclosure: The Open Markets Institute signed the letter to Tyson shareholders.

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What We're Reading

• In a letter to Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, Reps. Jeff Fortenberry of Nebraska and Chellie Pingree of Maine said that the USDA’s coronavirus relief overlooked small diversified farms. Several large food chains, including Piggly Wiggly and P.F. Chang’s, received Payroll Protection Program loans meant for small businesses. (The Food & Environment Reporting Network and The Counter)

• As Wall Street buys up private forestland, financiers increasingly profit from logging and timber tax cuts at rural communities’ expense. (ProPublica)

• OSHA subpoenaed South Dakota health officials for data and correspondence with Smithfield regarding the COVID-19 outbreak in Smithfield’s Sioux Falls plant. Smithfield asked the U.S. District Court for South Dakota to quash the subpoena. (Sioux Falls Argus Leader)

About the Open Markets Institute

The Open Markets Institute promotes political, industrial, economic, and environmental resilience. We do so by documenting and clarifying the dangers of extreme consolidation, and by fostering discussions of ways to reestablish America’s political economy on a more stable and fair foundation.

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