'Essential should not mean expendable': Lincoln rally seeks to protect meatpacking workers

[Omaha Steve]

Source: Omaha World Herald

By Erin Duffy

As the coronavirus pandemic persists, workers at the Smithfield Foods pork plant in Crete have face masks and shields.

But it's not enough to fully protect them from the virus that's sickened thousands of meatpacking and food production workers, longtime Smithfield worker Geraldine Waller said Tuesday at a rally on the steps of Nebraska's State Capitol.

Disposable masks are easily soiled by animal blood and breathing during long shifts. Face shields fog up — a safety hazard when workers are wielding sharp knives and meat hooks to butcher hogs. Locker rooms remain crowded and the production line hasn't slowed, even though workers are still calling in sick or staying home because they worry about contracting the virus.

"We are human beings, essential workers, not robots and not disposable," Waller said.



Advocacy groups and meatpacking workers rallied to ask the Nebraska Legislature to enforce more workplace protections for meat and food processing workers.

SMITHFIELD FOODS

Read more: https://omaha.com/news/state-and-regional/essential-should-not-mean-expendable-lincoln-rally-seeks-to-protect-meatpacking-workers/article_6c18ab17-8788-5f13-81dc-2d9047910e5d.html#tracking-source=home-top-story-1

[Wellstone ruled]

1. Well,got to ram those hogs

through in order to fill the latest China Orders. Oh,btw,hope everyone understands that Smithfield is a Chinese Company.

[keithbvadu2]

2. Wisconsin Supreme Court justice: Meatpackers aren't 'regular folks'

Wisconsin Supreme Court justice: Meatpackers aren't 'regular folks'

https://www.democraticunderground.com/10142489043

[cstanleytech]

3. The face masks and shields should be enough though you would think.

Maybe though the issue is something else such as the bathrooms and or the dining facilities?
By that I mean maybe they do not have enough dining facilities for the worker's to keep safe distance or they have insufficient restrooms.
Another issue could be is that the companies are being cheap and are not keeping one or both of those things clean enough to prevent the spread.

[BumRushDaShow]

4. Another issue

and maybe not so much with the meat-packing but with other food-processing plants with immigrant labor, is the housing. Some food plants have buildings onsite where workers sleep, and naturally, those are jammed packed.

What seems to be happening now, outside of a larger percent of young people "socializing", which is helping to keep this fire going, you have spread happening more and more within families... and those individuals may be "essential employees" who go to a workplace "asymptomatic" - at least at first (meaning the "temperature checks" of them at a plant is completely useless), and off it goes.

[Warpy]

5. This should gain traction everywhere

If I'm still alive by then, I intend to be a pain in the ass to my Congresscritters, trying to drum up some support for raising the wages of these essential workers who are paid like shit and treated worse.