Cargill says packing plant safe but union disagrees

Union says there are still too many questions that remain unanswered

Concerns remain about the decision to resume operations at the Cargill meat-packing plant where more than 900 employees have been infected by the COVID-19 virus.

The High River facility is set to reopen Monday following a two-week shutdown, operating at one shift as it resumes production. Cargill said in a statement Wednesday it had the support of Alberta Health Services and Occupational Health and Safety to reopen.

So far, 908 of the plant’s 2,000 employees have been infected by COVID-19, of whom 631 have recovered. One person has died.

The United Food and Commercial Workers Local 401, which represents the plant’s workers, has said it’s planning legal action in an attempt to extend the closure, which began April 20.

Spokesman Michael Hughes said many questions remain unanswered, despite public assurances from Alberta’s health-care authorities that the plant is safe to reopen.

“These are the same authorities that said the plant was safe when there were 38 cases, and that has since ballooned,” said Hughes.

“From our vantage point, we’ve seen no shift in perspective or methodology,” he said.

“Those same folks held a telephone town hall right before people basically didn’t show up to work and told people, including ministers from the government of Alberta … the plant was safe,” Hughes added.

The union had previously called for a 14-day shutdown, but Hughes said that isn’t sufficient.

He said Cargill and the province haven’t done enough to ensure workers feel safe enough to return, or that another outbreak could be prevented.

The province’s Occupational Health and Safety branch investigates serious work site incidents, including fatalities, and has the authority to charge parties that violate provincial legislation.

A spokeswoman for Labour and Immigration Minister Jason Copping said Thursday that OHS was still investigating circumstances at the Cargill plant that led to the outbreak, including any possible non-compliance with health and safety legislation that may have caused so many workers to be infected.

“AHS and OHS officials will continue to monitor and ensure that Cargill is implementing appropriate measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and protect workers,” said Adrienne South.

“OHS takes workplace safety seriously and will examine any concerns that are raised through the complaints process going forward,” said South.

“The investigations are ongoing and once they have been completed, the Occupational Health and Safety investigation report will be made public. Complex investigations can take a significant amount of time to complete.”

She added that OHS and AHS inspectors were on site this week and will return to the Cargill plant on Monday.

Cargill said it has installed barriers, provided protective equipment to staff and has reduced the potential for close interactions between employees at its site.

High River Mayor Craig Snodgrass said in a Facebook live video on Thursday that the town of about 14,000 people was “trending in the right direction,” in handling the pandemic.

“Those that are affected by this, and primarily the Cargill workers that are in town, are doing an excellent job of doing their isolation and staying home, or using the isolation measures that are in place,” Snodgrass said.

The mayor has previously criticized provincial health officials for what he called a lapse in communication over the Cargill outbreak.

Premier Jason Kenney said he was confident in the “competence of our officials” to assess safety risks at the Cargill plant. He said the province would demand “the closest possible oversight” of the facility.

“There’s obviously an enormous amount of scrutiny being placed on that and other plants by a number of regulatory agencies,” the premier said Thursday.

He added that once the covid -19 pandemic is over, the government would launch a study of “what we did right and what didn’t go well,” including lessons learned from the outbreak at Cargill.

“I know for those folks who want us to take absolutely zero risk right across society in every instance, they’d like us to shut everything down indefinitely. But clearly, food security and our food supply chains constitute an essential service,” Kenney said.

“We simply cannot shut down every food processing plant in Alberta or in Canada because that would create an obvious crisis in terms of food security.”

But Hughes said employees shouldn’t have to fear for their health on the job.

“The empiricism of the numbers should bear out that they were dead wrong and their approach has been a failure. We need an independent, workers-centred investigation into what led to this being the epicentre of the largest work site outbreak in North America,” he said.

“At what point do we say, ‘what we’ve been doing hasn’t been working, we better start listening to the workers who we’re telling to go in to work?’ “