http://www.labornotes.org/2010/07/immigrant-workers-non-union-chicken-plant-stop-work-over-dangerous-conditionsFrancisco Risso | July 15, 2010
Chicken processing workers stopped the line for an hour at the Case Farms plant in Morganton, North Carolina, over dangerous and abusive conditions.
The remarkable wildcat action, in late April, won the non-union and largely immigrant workforce several gains—including an all-important decrease in line speed—which they have preserved. About 150 workers stopped work, out of 500.
The action centered around long-held grievances that workers formed into a petition. They demanded that managers stop treating workers like machines, listen to workers when they approach them with concerns, decrease the speed of injury-causing production lines, stop expecting increased production with fewer personnel, allow bathroom breaks, and restore workers available to sharpen knives.
Pedro Montes is a Guatemalan immigrant who has worked in the plant for five years. (His name has been changed for his security.) He says workers took action despite their vulnerable position as immigrants because the job was becoming too dangerous. Workers use knives, scissors, and electric saws to cut fast-moving chickens into pieces.
“Our knife sharpeners had been replaced so that production could be increased, and they still gave us more work to do with less help on the line,” Montes said. About a month before, management had increased the line speed from 38 chickens a minute to 48.
The combination of dull knives and speedup was producing more injuries faster. When the line is fast, workers’ hands hurt and swell, and they have more risk of getting cut. A friend of Pedro’s who was cutting “tenders” cut his hand when a wingless chicken came down the line, leaving him nothing to grab onto.
FULL story at link.
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