SPLC

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) brought a lawsuit last week in U.S. district court against a Georgia-based poultry company for discriminating against an employee with a work-related injury. The firm, Wayne Farms, is one I’ve written about previously (e.g., here, here, here.)  They’re a company identified by OSHA for not only serious safety problems, but for injury care that was seriously “out-of-date and contrary to good medical practice.”  In one example, a worker with a repetitive motion injury had been seen at least 94 times at a plant's nurses station before being…

[Updated below (March 13, 2015)] In September 2013, fifteen civil rights and labor organizations sent a 72-page petition to OSHA. The groups were urging the agency to develop a regulation to protect poultry and meatpacking workers from repetitive motion injuries. More than 16 months later, OSHA has yet to send the petitioners a single piece of paper in response to their rulemaking request. You’d think a thoughtful letter, written by pro-worker groups including the Southern Poverty Law Center, Interfaith Worker Justice and the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health, would be…

“When workers get hurt in poultry plants, many employers try to just throw them away,” explained Tom Fritzsche a staff attorney with the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).  “Companies assume workers won’t stand up for themselves. We are proud to represent a group of brave workers who want to keep these dangerous conditions from harming even more people.” Fritzsche’s comment came after SPLC filed a complaint last week with the Labor Department on behalf of nine poultry workers from Wayne Farms’ facility in Jack, Alabama. The complaint alleges the firm violated a slew of OSHA standards---from…

The poultry industry must have its head stuck in the chicken coop. With Thanksgiving nearly upon us, the industry is trying to convince the public that poultry-processing plants are great places to earn a living. In just about a week, they’ve issued two written statements insisting they have stellar records on workplace safety. Tom Super, VP of communications for the National Chicken Council, wrote on Nov. 22 at the MeatingPlace blog about recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) on workplace injury rates. He noted that the case rate for all reportable injuries in illnesses in…

Senator 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…