Tag Archives: meatpacking

Arguments against COVID safety standards in meatpacking sound same in court and in the Unicameral

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Nebraska legislators narrowly advanced legislation, that if enacted, would mandate basic COVID-19 safety measures at meatpacking plants.

State Senator Tony Vargas of Omaha introduced the bill to protect meatpacking workers. According to Vargas, 7382 meatpacking workers contracted COVID-19, 256 were hospitalized and 23 died due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

I support this legislation. Early on in the pandemic, I wrote about why I thought workers’ compensation laws weren’t suited to help workers effected by the pandemic. The bill includes requirements about reporting COVID-19 exposure which would aide in prosecuting workers’ compensation cases related to COVID-19.

But, the bill does not include a presumption of workers compensation coverage for COVID-19 exposure. One would think that relatively mild legislation would face little opposition. But that assumption would be wrong.

Somewhat unsurprisingly the arguments used by opponents of COVID-19 safety measure opponents mirrored arguments made by packinghouses in COVID-related litigation. Some legislators argued that the state should not regulate workplace safety in meatpacking houses because that was the job of the federal government. In short, the state was pre-empted from regulating safety conditions in meatpacking plants.

Tyson Foods made similar arguments about federal preemption in their defense to an Iowa state law case involving a lawsuit against Tyson for having their managers make bets on COVID-19 death tolls in an Iowa plant.

I think the preemption argument is specious because states clearly have the right under the 10th Amendment to make laws about health and safety. That’s the constitutional basis for workers’ compensation laws.

On the flip side, the basis for the federal government to regulate meatpacking stems from the interstate commerce clause. Meatpacking is one of many businesses in Nebraska engaged in interstate commerce. Under the theory advanced by opponents of safeguards for meatpacking workers, the state wouldn’t have the right to regulate those industries either.

Federal and state laws conflict all the time in matters of workplace safety and the effects of workplace injury. Meatpacking plants in Nebraska are largely operated by large multi-national firms with armies of lawyers who comply with all sorts of rules and regulations in different states and countries.  

In my view, the packing plants exploited a gap in workers compensation laws to largely avoid paying COVID-19 benefits under workers’ compensation. The standards proposed by Senator Vargas are reasonable, constitutional and should have passed with little debate last year when they were originally proposed.

The offices of Rehm, Bennett, Moore & Rehm, which also sponsors the Trucker Lawyers website, are located in Lincoln and Omaha, Nebraska. Five attorneys represent plaintiffs in workers’ compensation, personal injury, employment and Social Security disability claims. The firm’s lawyers have combined experience of more than 95 years of practice representing injured workers and truck drivers in Nebraska, Iowa and other states with Nebraska and Iowa jurisdiction. The lawyers regularly represent hurt truck drivers and often sue Crete Carrier Corporation, K&B Trucking, Werner Enterprises, UPS, and FedEx. Lawyers in the firm hold licenses in Nebraska and Iowa and are active in groups such as the College of Workers’ Compensation Lawyers, Workers' Injury Law & Advocacy Group (WILG), American Association for Justice (AAJ), the Nebraska Association of Trial Attorneys (NATA), and the American Board of Trial Advocates (ABOTA). We have the knowledge, experience and toughness to win rightful compensation for people who have been injured or mistreated.

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More work injuries likely after ICE raids

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Last month Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raided four chicken processing plants in Mississippi and arrested 650 people for alleged immigration violations. Lots of attention has focused, rightly so, on the children of the workers’ who were detained and the communities where the raids happened.

Less attention has been focused on what will happen to the workers who weren’t arrested at those worksites after the raids. I think workers at those plants will experience more injuries for two reasons

In December 2006, ICE launched a major raid at the Swift Beef plant in Grand Island, Nebraska. Our firm had several clients working in that plant at the time. I remember my clients reporting to me that they were forced to work faster and harder to make up for the employees lost in the ICE raid.

Meat packing employees are already at a relatively high risk for overuse injuries. That risk will likely be heightened if employees are required to work longer and faster in order to make up for employees lost to an ICE raid. Studies show that newer employees are more vulnerable to injuries. The employees who replace the arrested employees will likely be more vulnerable to injury as well.

Meatpacking has the reputation of being a low-skill job. I don’t think that is the case. I know at least in beef packing there are so-called “show stopper” or hourly positions that can nearly shutdown a plant if those “show stopper” employees don’t come to work. Assuming those some “show stopper” employees were arrested, existing employees are likely being trained to perform those jobs or they will be performed by supervisors. Effectively those current employees would be new employees because they would be performing an unfamiliar job.

There were likely workers who were arrested in the raid that had workers’ compensation claims. I don’t know what the law is in Mississippi, but in Nebraska immigration status has little effect on entitlement to workers’ compensation benefits.

There has been some discussion that the raids were a form of retaliation for workers at Koch Foods in Mortion, Mississippi who obtained a $3.5 million settlement from the EEOC for a hostile workplace. I agree that the threat of immigration enforcement does intimidate workers from exercising their rights at work.

But on the other hand, any employer who colludes with ICE to arrest part of their workforce in order to intimidate their workers is cutting off their nose to spite their face. Media coverage of the raids focused on the fact that food processors have sought out an immigrant workforce as a way to cut costs and limit the power of unions. Fortunately, in Nebraska, many meatpacking plants are unionized despite the challegnes posed to unionization in rural areas with a very diverse workforce. It is difficult to discern the motivations of employers, but it could be reasonable to presume that an employer that heavily relies on immigrant labor wouldn’t want to have part of that labor force taken away by an ICE raid. Other employers who weren’t subject to the EEOC settlement at Koch Foods were also raided by ICE.

Meatpackers are in the business of slaughtering and processing animals for meat.  Sure those employers may save some money by discouraging workers’ compensation and unfair employment claims through the threat of immigration raids, but the packinghouses need to keep the chain moving.  That’s harder to do when they are short-staffed due to an ICE raid. 

Plants that were hit with ICE raids are going to be hard pressed to return to pre-raid production levels overnight. That’s why the remaining employees will probably have to work harder, possibly in unfamiliar jobs and likely be more vulnerable to injury.

The offices of Rehm, Bennett, Moore & Rehm, which also sponsors the Trucker Lawyers website, are located in Lincoln and Omaha, Nebraska. Five attorneys represent plaintiffs in workers’ compensation, personal injury, employment and Social Security disability claims. The firm’s lawyers have combined experience of more than 95 years of practice representing injured workers and truck drivers in Nebraska, Iowa and other states with Nebraska and Iowa jurisdiction. The lawyers regularly represent hurt truck drivers and often sue Crete Carrier Corporation, K&B Trucking, Werner Enterprises, UPS, and FedEx. Lawyers in the firm hold licenses in Nebraska and Iowa and are active in groups such as the College of Workers’ Compensation Lawyers, Workers' Injury Law & Advocacy Group (WILG), American Association for Justice (AAJ), the Nebraska Association of Trial Attorneys (NATA), and the American Board of Trial Advocates (ABOTA). We have the knowledge, experience and toughness to win rightful compensation for people who have been injured or mistreated.

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“They have a mosque in small town Nebraska?”

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Islamic Center of Omaha

I spent a lot of time in rural Nebraska, so I have enjoyed following Chris Arnade’s tour of the forgotten parts of rural America. His tweets are a highlight of a Twitter feed filled with self-promotion and nasty bickering.

On July 3rd, Arnade made it to Nebraska and stopped in a place I know fairly well, Lexington, Nebraska.

Lexington is home to Tyson beef packing plant that employees roughly 3500. I have been travelling to Lexington since 2006 to represent clients who have been hurt at Tyson and other employers. My father Rod, has been doing the same thing since about 1990.

Like many other outside observers of Lexington, Arnade’s attention was drawn to the presence of a large Somali community in Lexington Arnade and other commenters immediately drew the connection between the Tyson plant and the Somali population. Comments about the Somali population in Lexington broke down into three categories:

  1. Vile racist alt-right comments.
  2. Comments from “locals” like me that amounted to “This isn’t news to us” but that were sympathetic towards immigrants.
  3. Comments that were generally sympathetic to the immigrant population made by commenters from coastal and urban areas.

The first group of comments doesn’t deserve a response. The more sympathetic comments from urban areas do deserve a response. Underlying the well-intentioned sympathy for immigrant meat packing workers in rural areas is an assumption that these immigrants are doing work that native-born workers refuse to do.

This assumption is not true. I can argue this anecdotally because I have represented several native-born Americans in meat packing cases over the years. But there are other explanations of why meat packing plants in rural areas hire a substantial number of immigrants.

The first reason is population. Rural areas have a difficult time finding employees to fill highly-paid professional jobs. Meat packing doesn’t pay particularly well and is notorious for being hazardous. A combination of dangerous work and a small population base makes even good paying jobs difficult to fill. As an example, Nebraska placed a maximum security prison in rural Tecumseh, Nebraska in 2001. The combination of dangerous work and the lack of nearby workers has contributed to chronic staff shortages at Tecumseh. Large meat packing plants in rural areas need more labor than those rural areas can provide on their own. Immigrants help fill the need.

Meatpacking plants also draw in native born workers for urban areas. I recently represented a man from Denver whose wife was from New York City who worked at a packinghouse in rural Nebraska. His family didn’t want to move to an urban area because of crime and a higher cost of living. My client is representative of many former urbanites who have moved out of cities into urban areas. Much attention has been drawn recently to the drastic decline of the African-American population in Chicago. The decline is attributed to crime, the cost of living and lack of jobs in Chicago. Again, anecdotally, I have represented several transplanted Chicago residents in Nebraska workers compensation claims over the years. Former Chicago residents are making their home in rural Nebraska for the same reasons that immigrants are: lower cost of living and the availability of jobs

Despite the overwhelming evidence that native born employees are willing to work in meatpacking, the myth that only immigrants work in meatpacking is persistent. The persistence of this myth rests on several assumptions. The first assumption is based on a romantic notion about manual labor, usually spread by people who never had to support themselves by manual labor. Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse is a prominent proponent of this myth. The myth is something along the lines of people are is soft “too soft” and some hard work will just toughen you up. This myth can deflect legitimate concerns about workplace safety into wimpy and politically correct griping.

An even more insidious basis for the myth that native born Americans won’t work in meatpacking is scientific racism. Scientific racism is the belief that certain ethnic groups are better at some tasks than others. When urban liberals state “Immigrants do the jobs that natives won’t do” they probably don’t mean that there is something inherent in the DNA of Latinos and east Africans that allows them to not to get bi-lateral carpal tunnel and epicondylitis from trimming 3000 briskets over an 8 hour shift. But there is an assumption that immigrants are willing to tough it out while native born workers can’t. This isn’t true. Lots of immigrants can’t handle the physical demands of meatpacking working, but some can. The same goes for native born workers.

Another reason for the myth that native born workers won’t work in meatpacking is the subtle bias of those who report on working conditions in the meatpacking industry. Much of what America knows about meatpacking in rural America is reported by urban journalists like Arande or Fast Food Nation author Eric Schlosser. You almost get the impression that when journalists like Arande see an east African restaurant paired with a Hispanic clothing store in rural Nebraska they feel some intense wave of nostalgia for some idealized crime free but non-gentrified urban neighborhood free of hipsters and artisan cheese shops.  The shock when a journalist happens upon a mosque and African restaurant in rural Nebraska overwhelms the larger story about the impact of meatpacking on the labor force in rural America.

Arnade has gone out of way his way to be fair to rural residents. However not all writers share Arnade’s fair-minded attitude towards rural Americans. In December, liberal commentator Markos Moulitsas wrote that people should be glad that coal miners who voted for Donald Trump were going to lose their health insurance. Coal mining is probably as hazardous a job as meatpacking. But to an urban liberal audience, immigrant meat packers deserve sympathy for working in a dangerous job, but Trump-supporting native born coal miners who work in an equally hazardous job deserve contempt.

The ugly sentiments expressed by Moulitsas found a more hideous expression from New York Times columnist Bret Stephens. The toxic Tory “joked” that the U.S. should deport native born working class people, but that nobody would want them. Stephens “ironic” comments draw an eerie parallel with the ironic racists of the alt-right. it’s disturbing that a so-called liberal publication would give this jerk a bi-weekly forum.

The ugliness of Bret Stephens class prejudice follows from well-meaning assumptions that native born Americans will not work in industries like meatpacking. There is a shared assumption that immigrants have particular virtues and native-born Americans have particular vices and defects. These misconceptions fuel resentments and backlash that opportunists can exploit.  A better understanding of the workforce in rural areas will help honest-minded people overcome views that help perpetuate anger that works to undercut rights and benefits of all workers regardless of race or citizenship status.

The offices of Rehm, Bennett, Moore & Rehm, which also sponsors the Trucker Lawyers website, are located in Lincoln and Omaha, Nebraska. Five attorneys represent plaintiffs in workers’ compensation, personal injury, employment and Social Security disability claims. The firm’s lawyers have combined experience of more than 95 years of practice representing injured workers and truck drivers in Nebraska, Iowa and other states with Nebraska and Iowa jurisdiction. The lawyers regularly represent hurt truck drivers and often sue Crete Carrier Corporation, K&B Trucking, Werner Enterprises, UPS, and FedEx. Lawyers in the firm hold licenses in Nebraska and Iowa and are active in groups such as the College of Workers’ Compensation Lawyers, Workers' Injury Law & Advocacy Group (WILG), American Association for Justice (AAJ), the Nebraska Association of Trial Attorneys (NATA), and the American Board of Trial Advocates (ABOTA). We have the knowledge, experience and toughness to win rightful compensation for people who have been injured or mistreated.

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Series Shows Reality for Workers at Meatpacking Plants

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Here are many recommended reading links for people who care about how workers are treated at places that process the meat that lands on their tables.

I have recently written about how packing plants are still brutal places to work, according to the Government Accountability office, and the articles below reinforce those perceptions.

Harvest Public Media and NET Nebraska recently collaborated on reports that show the reality of life for the majority of people who work in meatpacking plants. Because there is different information in the audio and the written reports, I think it’s best to read and listen to both. The series is appropriately called: Dangerous Jobs, Cheap Meat

The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA for short, considers work in food plants to be high-hazard manufacturing industries, and recently completed a 90-day regional emphasis in Nebraska, Kansas and Missouri that focused on such businesses.

Getting hurt working in a meatpacking plant is so common. As a person can read at the links, injury incidents range from repetitive motion problems for workers on the line to a maintenance worker being killed by machinery without the right guards and also amputations for employees struggling to earn a wage and keep up with line speeds.

Even with new reporting requirements that OSHA has, some experts say that injuries are underreported in meatpacking plants. A recent report also showed that working conditions were bad, specifically in poultry plants.

“The rate of meatpacking workers who lose time or change jobs because they’re injured is 70 percent higher than the average for manufacturing workers overall, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics,” as quoted in the NET Nebraska article about safety efforts. However, the article says that “meat processing is drastically safer than it was 20 years ago.”

Knowing that a workplace is safer but is a place where “meat and poultry workers are still hurt more often than other manufacturing workers” is a small assurance to those who work there.

The article talks about how companies are trying to change their culture and safety records.

It’s hard to not be skeptical, as injured workers are rushed back to the line, denied treatment, or fired for being unable to perform their jobs. That’s one reason that we represent meatpacking plant employees and families who suffer a wrongful death.

Greta Horner said this in the article about her husband’s “preventable” death as a maintenance worker at a meatpacking plant, and I firmly believe it.

“They need to realize that everybody that works there is a human being with a life and it’s not just a statistic, it’s a person.

“Their employees aren’t cattle that go through the chutes. They’re people with families.”

The offices of Rehm, Bennett, Moore & Rehm, which also sponsors the Trucker Lawyers website, are located in Lincoln and Omaha, Nebraska. Five attorneys represent plaintiffs in workers’ compensation, personal injury, employment and Social Security disability claims. The firm’s lawyers have combined experience of more than 95 years of practice representing injured workers and truck drivers in Nebraska, Iowa and other states with Nebraska and Iowa jurisdiction. The lawyers regularly represent hurt truck drivers and often sue Crete Carrier Corporation, K&B Trucking, Werner Enterprises, UPS, and FedEx. Lawyers in the firm hold licenses in Nebraska and Iowa and are active in groups such as the College of Workers’ Compensation Lawyers, Workers' Injury Law & Advocacy Group (WILG), American Association for Justice (AAJ), the Nebraska Association of Trial Attorneys (NATA), and the American Board of Trial Advocates (ABOTA). We have the knowledge, experience and toughness to win rightful compensation for people who have been injured or mistreated.

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Packing Plants Are Modern-Day ‘Jungle’

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crete-nebraska-meat-packingBeef and chicken packing plants remain “brutal” workplaces, according to a recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) study of the industry. More than 100 years ago, Sinclair Lewis, in “The Jungle,” wrote of brutal work conditions and treatment of Eastern European immigrants. Today the brutality continues, but the immigrants are from Latin America and, increasingly, Africa. The meat industry recruits them. The pay sucks, the conditions are uncomfortable, and the injuries pile on. Wages are frequently below $15 an hour.

Fifteen years ago, Eric Schlosser wrote “Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal,” which was considered a modern “Jungle.” He wrote of fast line speed in the modern packing industry and pointed out how it devastated modern workers. The book was a best-seller and made it to the big screen. It was a noble effort to get changes that protected packing-plant workers. Sadly, the bulk of legal reforms since the book have benefited employers. They attack workers every year in every state legislature. Sadly, the workers who bring us the food we enjoy just keep getting ignored.

It seems the more things change, the more they stay the same for this group of hardworking people.

The offices of Rehm, Bennett, Moore & Rehm, which also sponsors the Trucker Lawyers website, are located in Lincoln and Omaha, Nebraska. Five attorneys represent plaintiffs in workers’ compensation, personal injury, employment and Social Security disability claims. The firm’s lawyers have combined experience of more than 95 years of practice representing injured workers and truck drivers in Nebraska, Iowa and other states with Nebraska and Iowa jurisdiction. The lawyers regularly represent hurt truck drivers and often sue Crete Carrier Corporation, K&B Trucking, Werner Enterprises, UPS, and FedEx. Lawyers in the firm hold licenses in Nebraska and Iowa and are active in groups such as the College of Workers’ Compensation Lawyers, Workers' Injury Law & Advocacy Group (WILG), American Association for Justice (AAJ), the Nebraska Association of Trial Attorneys (NATA), and the American Board of Trial Advocates (ABOTA). We have the knowledge, experience and toughness to win rightful compensation for people who have been injured or mistreated.

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