010801 Meat Industry Workers at Risk on Job

Sturgis, SD - Investigative reporter Eric Schlosser's controversial best- seller “Fast Food Nation” (Houghton Mifflin Co.) has focused new attention on how the nation's meat packers treat their employees.

An excerpt from Schlosser's book, published in the July/August issue of “Mother Jones” magazine, characterizes working in a slaughterhouse as “The Most Dangerous Job in America.”

“In 1999, more than one-quarter of America's nearly 150,000 meatpacking workers suffered a job-related injury or illness,” Schlosser noted -- a rate of serious injury that is “more than five times the national average.”

“The actual number is most likely higher,” he wrote, because “The meatpacking industry has a well-documented history of discouraging injury reports, falsifying injury data, and putting injured workers back on the job quickly to minimize the reporting of lost workdays.”

Workers repeatedly told him, Schlosser wrote, of being “under tremendous pressure not to report injuries.”

Figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics in Washington show the injury rate in meatpacking per 100 full-time workers in 1999 was 26.7%, compared with 9.2% for manufacturing as a whole, Janet Devine, manager of the Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses, said.

Meatpacker IBP, an employer of 52,000 workers, with headquarters in Dakota Dunes, S.D., denied Schlosser's charges that reports of injuries are being concealed.

“IBP requires employees to report every work-related injury, regardless how minor,” said Gary Mickelson, IBP manager of communications. Many of the injuries reported are minor, he countered, so that “if you injure your hand and get an ice pack from the nurse a couple of times the injury is considered OSHA recordable.” OSHA is the acronym for the Occupational Health and Safety Administration, of the federal Department of Labor.

Rosemary Mucklow, executive director of the National Meat Association, a trade group in Oakland, California, called Schlosser's book “a piece of fiction,” adding, “the more outrageous you can write a fictional book, the more copies you can sell.”

“Occasionally, accidents will happen and the industry takes it very, very seriously and tries to be sure to prevent any re-occurrence,” Mucklow said.

But spokeswoman Janet Riley of the American Meat Institute, of Arlington, Virginia, conceded, “I'm afraid to say his (Schlosser's) injury figures are accurate.” The trade association represents 800 members engaged in meat and poultry processing.

“What he (Schlosser) doesn't say is that over the last decade we've had a 40% reduction in worker injury and illness, and a 60% reduction in incidents resulting in loss of time from work,” Riley added.

Also not included in the meatpacking story is the industry's low fatality rate of about two per 100,000 workers. According to economist Mark Zak, of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, many occupations are far worse. From the highest down, fishing, 163; timber cutters, 130; aircraft pilots, 66; structural metal workers, 61; construction laborers, 37; mining, 36; farming, 30; truck drivers, 29, and so on.

Greg Denier, director of communications for the Food and Commercial Workers AFL-CIO, in Washington, D.C., said IBP has set up “a model ergonomic program” in its Dakota City, Nebraska, plant and “its relationship with workers has been steadily improving and moving in the right direction.”

Schlosser further charged that, “At many (meatpacking) plants you get no health insurance until you've been on the job for six months.” Given the industry's turnover rate of 70%, he said, many employees go uncovered. IBP's Mickelson declined to reveal IBP's turnover figures but retorted, “At most of our plants, production employees qualify for our health insurance program after 90 days on the job.”

At some IBP plants, Schlosser wrote, injured workers are asked to sign away their right to sue their employer in favor of accepting the company's own injury settlement plan. One such form reads in part, “I am giving up any rights I or any family member have to sue either the Company or anyone for whom the Company is responsible in exchange for being able to participate in the Program.”

Personal injury lawyer Kevin Glasheen of Fadduol Glasheen & Valles, of Lubbock, Tex., offered a harsh example: “A guy whose hands were crushed in a bone-breaking machine had a pen put in his mouth to sign the form before he could get medical treatment.”

Injured workers who do sign the waiver, Glasheen said, likely have no idea that the company payoff may be only “tens of thousands” (of dollars) for a serious injury, one that “could be worth millions of dollars on a negligence claim.”

IBP's Mickelson responded by saying the waiver arrangement pertains only to Texas, where employers can legally opt out of the state workers' compensation program. “We believe our program pays more benefits than what is required to be paid through a Texas workers' private (corporate) insurance program,” he said.

RETURN TO HOME PAGE

E-mail: sflanagan@sprintmail.com