line speed
cmonforton | February 27, 2014The billion-dollar poultry industry chews up its workers and spits them out like a chaw of tobacco. One of those workers is in Washington, DC this week to make a plea to the Obama Administration. For 17 years, Salvadora Roman, 59 worked on the de-boning line at a Wayne Farms poultry processing plant in Alabama. The production line ran at an incessant pace that forced her (and her co-workers) to make tens of thousands of repetitive motions on each and every work shift. Her hands and wrists eventually became so swollen and painful that she requested to be moved to a less hand-intensive task.…
cmonforton | September 19, 2013Senator Kirsten Gillibrand introduced last week the Safe Meat and Poultry Act (S. 1502). The bill would require USDA's Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) to take new steps to decrease foodborne pathogens, including authority to compel producers to recall contaminated meat and poultry.
The legislative text is 73 pages long, but one short paragraph caught my eye: a provision addressing the serious health and safety hazards to which meat and poultry workers are exposed. It's an issue that we've written about many times (e.g.. here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here). It…
lborkowski | March 13, 2013Alabama's poultry industry produces more than one billion broiler chickens each year and accounts for 10% of the state's economy. According to the new report Unsafe at These Speeds, this production comes at a steep price for the low-paid, hourly workers working in poultry plants.
The Southern Poverty Law Center and Alabama Appleseed interviewed 302 poultry workers from Alabama's poultry industry and heard about grueling work that has left nearly three-fourths of them reporting significant work-related injuries or illnesses. A fast-moving processing line has small teams of workers handling…
cmonforton | December 18, 2012McClatchy Newspapers' Lindsay Wise reports in two stories today (here and here) on the USDA's proposal to "modernize" the poultry inspection process. The proposal, part of the Obama Administration's offerings in the name of eliminating burdensome regulations, will eliminate hundreds of Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) inspectors, allow line speeds to increase to 175 birds per minute, and cede to the poultry companies the task of spotting diseased and defective birds. USDA estimates the financial benefits to the poultry industry will exceed $250 million annually. Without those pesky…
cmonforton | April 26, 2012Gabriel Thompson writes today in The Nation about a summer job he had a few years back, working on the assembly line at a Pilgrim's Pride poultry plant in Alabama. The chickens flew by on hooks at 90 birds-per-minute as he sliced and cut the meat non-stop. It didn't take long for him to meet co-workers who suffered from painful and debilitating musculoskeletal disorders caused by the high-speed, repetitive work. Thompson writes:
"One was unable to hold a glass of water; another had three surgeries on her wrists; a third had discovered, after a visit to the doctor, that her thumb joint had…
lborkowski | December 30, 2010Liz and Celeste are on vacation, so we're re-posting some content from our old site.
By Celeste Monforton, originally posted 11/3/09
"How can it be safe with this line so fast?" .... "Come to the plant and you will see." ..."when a visitor comes they slow it down and when they leave they speed it up." "The line is too fast." "People say their hands hurt a lot." ...."Many people are injured and then they fire them."
These are the voices of 455 meatpacking plant workers in Nebraska -- not 100 years ago in Upton Sinclair's time, but from surveys conducted in 2007 and 2008 by the Nebraska…