worker safety

The Government Accountability Office urged federal regulators, in the words of Harvest Public Media, "to better protect meatpacking workers, who are often exposed to dangerous chemicals, not allowed bathroom breaks and refused medical treatment." The GAO report said workers sometimes decide not to report problems for fear of retaliation, making it harder for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to get a clear picture of conditions.

Republican lawmakers and the chicken industry "are aggressively lobbying to speed up" inspection lines, now limited to 140 birds per minute, at poultry slaughter and processing plants, says NBC News. The trade group National Chicken Council has petitioned USDA to allow plants participating in a new inspection system to operate "at any line speed" they can handle.

More than a third of migrant fishermen working in Thailand over the past five years have been victims of trafficking, and three-quarters of them have been in “debt bondage, working to pay off an obligation,” said Reuters, citing a new study by the anti-trafficking group International Justice Mission.

Even as it waits for President Trump to nominate a new secretary of Labor, the Department of Labor is rolling back policies meant to prevent worker safety violations, says The New York Times. “In a sharp break with the past, the department has stopped publicizing fines against companies. As of Monday, seven weeks after the inauguration of President Trump, the department had yet to post a single news release about an enforcement fine,” says the Times.

One of every seven American workers, 21.5 million in all, are employed in the food system, which recovered relatively quickly from the 2008-09 recession. But the "workers themselves have not seen positive changes," says a new report. "Poor working conditions, below-average wages and discriminatory and abusive practices are commonplace across the food chain."

Poultry workers say they are routinely denied bathroom breaks, according to a report by Oxfam America, based on interviews with workers at some of the nation's biggest poultry companies, including Tyson Foods, Perdue and Pilgrim's over the last three years.

The Associated Press won the Pulitzer Prize for public service with its year-long investigation "of severe labor abuses tied to the supply of seafood to American supermarkets and restaurants, reporting that freed 2,000 slaves, brought perpetrators to justice and inspired reform."

Maryland Rep. Andy Harris is expected to try to block the USDA from issuing new fair-play rules today for poultry farmers who raise birds under contract for large processors, said a small-farm advocacy group.

The Supreme Court, on a 6-2 ruling, upheld a decision that Tyson Foods, the largest U.S. meatpacker, must pay $5.8 million in a wage dispute involving 3,000 workers at a pork processing plant in Iowa, reports the Associated Press.

Workers at poultry processing plants endure "grim" conditions, says Oxfam America, in a report that calls for a better working environment at plants run by the four largest companies - Tyson Foods, Pilgrim's Perdue and Sanderson Farms.

"(C)ivil rights and worker-safety groups arranged for poultry workers to meet with lawmakers and administration officials to warn against the proposed acceleration of processing-line speeds...

Chiewelthap Mariar was about three years old when his family, Christians from South Sudan, fled the aggression of the Muslim-led government in the north. As Ted Genoways writes in FERN’s latest story, published with The New Republic, Chiewelthap was shot and killed at the plant on Jan. 9 by a Guymon police officer, apparently during a dispute with his managers over his work assignment.