Food plant workers lack protection
COVID-19 swept through as safety measures failed
For three years, Alberto Martínez worked at Calumet Diversified Meats in Pleasant Prairie, often putting in 12hour days and setting aside $160 a week to help put his daughter through college.
When the pandemic swept the nation in late March, Wisconsin went into lockdown. But Martínez, like thousands of other meatpacking employees, kept reporting to work. He was considered essential.
Three weeks later, on April 15, he died of COVID-19.
That same day, Kenosha County Division of Health officials received a message from a relative of another Calumet
Diversified Meats worker who alerted them to the death, stated three other plant employees had contracted the disease and raised concerns about the lack of safety measures.
“My family member works there, and she and I are very concerned,” the relative wrote.
Calumet workers continued to test positive, and two weeks later, another died.
In one of the most comprehensive examinations of conditions at food plants during the pandemic, a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel investigation shows major Wisconsin facilities did not take adequate safety measures weeks into the crisis, putting thousands at risk. As outbreaks grew, government authorities failed to crack down on some of the most troubled plants, despite warnings from workers and their advocates.
The disease has hit industry employees hard: At least 1,527 Wisconsin workers at 83 meatpacking and food processing plants have tested positive for the coronavirus, including eight who died, state data show. Many victims are Hispanic immigrants, including undocumented workers. Nationwide, over 17,000 meatpacking and poultry workers have tested positive and at least 91 have died.
The Journal Sentinel interviewed 36 employees at five Wisconsin food plants that had COVID-19 outbreaks, with four of the plants having more than 20 confirmed cases. The Journal Sentinel also reviewed thousands of pages of government records obtained through public records requests, including email exchanges between health officials and company managers.
At the Smithfield Foods meatpacking plant in Cudahy, just south of Milwaukee, 10 workers told the Journal Sentinel they witnessed the company taking at least two weeks after its first reported COVID-19 case on March 23 to adopt some critical safeguards. Eleven workers said employees were told to use mesh beard hairnets over their mouths as a preventive measure against the disease. Four workers said that before the company provided face masks, some employees brought their own but were told not to use them.
On April 7, two weeks after the first reported positive case at Smithfield, the son of a worker wrote to state health officials, saying the company was “doing very little or nothing” to prevent infections.
“Please do something and protect the community,” the man wrote in an email, which was forwarded to the City of Cudahy and the company.
By early May, 86 Smithfield workers at the Cudahy plant had gotten the virus .
In response to questions from the Journal Sentinel, Keira Lombardo, Smithfield’s executive vice president of corporate affairs and compliance, said the company swiftly adopted protective measures that met or exceeded federal guidance.
“We are doing everything we can, as fast as we can,” Lombardo said in a statement. She said the company provided face masks as quickly as possible and allowed workers to wear their own. She did not address workers’ accounts that they were told to wear hairnets as protection against the virus.
Raquel Sanchez said she tested positive in mid-April while working for one of the American Foods Group plants in Green Bay. But she said that, to her knowledge, the company didn’t tell other employees, including those who worked less than 6 feet away from her, that they could have been exposed. She said she felt obligated to do it herself.
“They should have told them,” she said.
About the same time Sanchez said that she learned she had the disease, the immigration advocacy group Voces de la Frontera filed a complaint with the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, saying the company wasn’t informing employees when coworkers tested positive. OSHA’s investigation into the complaint is open.
American Foods didn’t respond to phone calls or emails seeking comment.
At Calumet Diversified Foods, where Martínez worked, several officials didn’t respond to emails with questions and one representative, when reached by phone, declined to comment.
Jennifer Miller, spokeswoman for the Wisconsin Department of Health Services, said that at the outset of the pandemic, little was known about the risk of the disease spreading in meatpacking plants. Since then, she said, the department has provided guidance for the industry and worked with local authorities to conduct employee testing. She said the state doesn’t have the legal authority to close troubled plants, but some legal experts disagree.
And though some states have mandated comprehensive COVID-19 protections for workers, Wisconsin has not.
OSHA, whose mission is to ensure workplace safety, did not inspect plants when urged by workers in March through mid-April as COVID-19 was spreading in food processing facilities.
After OSHA received two complaints about the Smithfield Cudahy plant on March 27, the agency called the facility and learned it wasn’t providing masks or distancing workers on the production floor. Instead of opening an inspection, OSHA sent the company a brief letter that included tips on how to combat “influenza-like viruses” and links to government websites with COVID-19 information.
As of late July, the agency hadn’t yet cited any U.S. food plants for COVID-19 safety violations.
Two deaths, one plant, many questions
Alberto Martínez worked at Calumet Diversified Meats not only to pay for his daughter’s college but also to support his family back in Mexico. He was planning to return home in a few months.
Instead, he died at age 51 in a Kenosha County hospital of COVID-19. His daughter Tania Martínez said goodbye on the phone, 1,700 miles away, in Mexico City.
She said that during the pandemic, her father went to work until early April, when he became ill and had to be hospitalized.
Two days after being admitted, he called her to say doctors wanted to intubate him. He was against the procedure, but his body was failing. He told his daughter to be well in case they didn’t talk again.
The next day, she learned her father had no chance. A nurse got a phone into his room, and the daughter said goodbye.
“I told him I loved him very much,” she said.
Meatpacking plants have been breeding grounds for the virus, primarily because employees typically work closely together for hours. Separating workers may mean having to slow down production, and the plants have been deemed essential businesses, exempt from statewide lockdowns.
As the facilities remained open, safety guidance evolved. In early March, OSHA suggested businesses install physical barriers, such as sneeze guards. By late March, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said employers should implement social distancing if recommended by their state and local health authorities. On April 3, the agency recommended the public wear masks, reversing previous guidance.
The CDC didn’t publish specific guidance for meatpacking plants until April 26, a month after some of the first industry outbreaks started. The agency recommended firms separate workers, install barriers, provide face masks and screen workers for symptoms.
By that time, the outbreak at Calumet, one of the most serious in the state’s food plants, had already spread.
Martinez died on April 15. According to a Calumet co-worker, at the time of his death, the company had not implemented important COVID-19 safety measures, such as separating all workers by 6 feet and installing plexiglass barriers between workers.
That day, a relative of a different Calumet worker filed a similar complaint through the Kenosha County Division of Health website, saying the owner was not taking preventive measures.
A week later, on April 23, a Calumet representative emailed a county health division employee, stating the company knew of 18 workers who “are positive, are potentials, or presumed” cases of COVID-19.
“The list of people associated with these people would be the entire company,” the email said.
The day after a second Calumet worker died, the Wisconsin National Guard, in partnership with Kenosha County, tested 135 Calumet workers. A Kenosha County official wrote in an email that the county didn’t give the workers a form with instructions “because anyone that got tested would need to quarantine until results come back, which means no one would be going to work!”
They did go back to work, including some whose test results eventually came back positive.
On May 8, the county decided to publicly confirm the deaths of two Calumet workers and the 22 workers who tested positive during the National Guard testing, as well as additional cases at another company. Jen Freiheit, the head of the county health division, told a county spokesman in an email to “put it out there in a positive light.”
“We can tell of all the cooperative things these two plants did,” she wrote in an email.
A county news release later that day said Calumet had operated with minimal employees for two weeks and then shut operations for one week to disinfect. All employees wore masks and face shields and were screened. The company had staggered start times and painted the floor with 6-foot markings.
The news release quoted “company administration”: “We are doing everything possible to keep every employee safe and will continue to do so throughout this pandemic.”
But in mid-May, about a week later, a Calumet worker told the Journal Sentinel that some employees continued to work less than 6 feet apart without barriers between them.
It’s not publicly known what safety measures are now in place. Freiheit would not provide that information.
Calumet executives didn’t respond to emails. When contacted by phone, a company representative said: “We don’t speak with reporters, but thank you for calling. Have a great day.”
‘We were all worried’
Workers at four other Wisconsin plants said the facilities lacked safeguards when the pandemic hit and weeks afterward.
Most of the 36 workers interviewed by the Journal Sentinel requested anonymity for fear of retaliation by their employers. They included single mothers, breadwinners with young children, workers in their 60s and a woman whose husband had diabetes.
At Echo Lake Foods, an egg and frozen products processor in Burlington, company officials on April 21 posted a letter in the plant saying health authorities recommended that people stay home when sick.
But the firm didn’t provide paid sick leave to those who tested positive, five employees said, including one who had to be hospitalized after contracting COVID-19.
“I felt like I wouldn’t make it,” the worker said. “I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t even stand.”
Another worker said that employees were returning to work even if they were sick. Without a paycheck, he said, “how are you going to support your family?”
Only employers with fewer than 500 workers are legally required to provide COVID-19 paid leave. It’s unclear how many workers Echo Lake Foods employs; the company hasn’t provided a number.
Five workers said the company hasn’t screened workers for fever or symptoms, a measure recommended by the CDC to help prevent sick employees from reporting to work. Voces de la Frontera filed a complaint with OSHA in late April about the issue. The agency’s investigation into the complaint is open.
Echo Lake Foods officials did not respond to phone calls and emails. The company, Central Racine County Health Department and the state would not provide the number of infections.
In Cudahy, Smithfield plant workers had been testing positive for COVID-19 at least since March 23, according to a report by the Milwaukee County COVID-19 Epidemiology Intel Team.
The company screened employees for fevers since about March 30 but only started providing face masks during the week of April 13, at least 10 days after the CDC recommended their use, workers said.
Three employees said the company separated workers by 6 feet by early April in some areas. But in others, em
ployees said, many had to work less than 6 feet apart without barriers until Smithfield started closing the plant about April 19.
“We were all worried of getting infected and dying and infecting our families,” a Smithfield worker said.
Virginia-based Smithfield, the world's largest pork processor, has more than 40 U.S. plants, according to its website. Lombardo, the company official, said its plants have installed physical barriers in production areas and break rooms; provided masks and face shields; and conducted free on-site testing, among other measures.
Lombardo said that until April 3, the CDC instructed that masks, which were in short supply, be reserved for medical workers and didn't recommend them for people not infected. The company, she said, has worked nonstop to secure personal protective equipment and was able to supply masks to its workforce within a week of the CDC revising its guidance to say the general public should wear them.
In Green Bay, home to several American Foods Group plants, a total of 203 employees had tested positive by early May, when Brown County stopped releasing the data.
Five workers said that employees at one of the plants were working shoulder to shoulder without barriers separating them until the end of May, more than a month after the CDC issued industryspecific guidelines recommending social distancing and barriers in meat plants.
“We are all like in a can of sardines,” a worker told the Journal Sentinel in late May.
Many used masks brought from home, workers said. They said the ones that the company most often provided in May through July were made of a thin layer of cloth. The CDC and OSHA have said since late April that cloth masks should have multiple layers of fabric.
American Foods employee Filiberto Reyes said he was sent home in late April, not knowing if he had been fired, after raising safety concerns, according to an OSHA whistleblower complaint he filed with the help of Voces de la Frontera.
The complaint states he and other workers told management they were working faster due to the lack of employees and that their face masks were getting wet with sweat, which was dripping onto the raw meat.
A manager told workers no one was infected and that there was nothing to worry about, the complaint states. Later in the shift, a supervisor distributed face masks to those who had raised concerns.
The next day, the complaint says, he and another worker raised similar concerns. Reyes was told to go home. Reyes later said Voces de la Frontera helped him keep his job.
In its response to the OSHA complaint, American Foods Group said the firm suspended Reyes because he left a production line without permission and was insubordinate while arguing with a foreman, according to records provided to the Journal Sentinel by Voces de la Frontera. Reyes denied neglecting his work or being insubordinate.
At Birds Eye vegetable processing plant in Darien, 221 of the more than 800 workers have tested positive, according to Michael Cummins, spokesman for Chicago-based Conagra
Brands, which owns the plant.
Employees and advocacy group UMOS raised concerns in late April and mid-May about the safety of companyprovided housing for migrant workers.
Brothers Abraham and Kevin Nieto from Texas said they warned a housing supervisor that another worker in their barracks was sick. He was coughing and sweating, one of the brothers said. Another man living in the barracks told the Journal Sentinel that the sick man was vomiting.
All three workers said the sick man wasn't isolated for about two weeks. The brothers said that they subsequently tested positive for COVID-19 in late April.
Cummins, the Conagra Brands spokesman, said both the plant and human resources managers in Darien disputed the employees' account that a sick worker wasn't removed from the barracks. Cummins said that as soon as any employee showed signs of illness, they were tested and quarantined, and a medical provider had to clear them before they returned to work.
A complaint filed by UMOS with the Department of Workforce Development said that workers who tested positive were allowed to intermingle with others.
Cummins said the firm placed workers who tested positive in separate housing and asked them to stay away from other employees.
UMOS's complaint to the state's workforce development department was referred to OSHA, whose investigation into the company's practices is ongoing.
Birds Eye plant manager Christopher Guyon said that starting in mid-March, the firm tried to distance the beds as much as possible and required that workers sleep in every other one. The barracks now house about 20 workers compared to 100 prior to the pandemic, Cummins said. If employees prefer to obtain their own housing, the company offers stipends to cover the costs.
Cummins said the plant hasn't had a positive COVID-19 test since early June.
A failure to police
When the CDC and OSHA issued guidelines for meatpacking and poultry plants on April 26, much of the advice was hedged with “if feasible” or “if possible,” giving companies leeway about what measures to take.
And by the time OSHA started opening inspections due to complaints of COVID-19 safety at food plants, the virus had spread in many facilities. A Journal Sentinel analysis of OSHA data shows that from mid-March to April 19, the agency received at least 73 COVID-19 complaints about plants in states where OSHA enforces workplace safety. But the agency did not open an inspection on any of them until April 20.
In addition, OSHA decided not to issue emergency COVID-19 standards that would would make it easier to hold companies accountable.
OSHA spokeswoman Emily Weeks said the agency already has the rules it needs to protect workers. She said OSHA investigates all complaints, has worked around the clock to protect workers and that both OSHA and the CDC developed recommendations for meatpacking plants as rapidly as possible. The CDC didn't respond to questions.
Across the country, some state and local health authorities, including Milwaukee's commissioner of health, ordered plants to temporarily close to control outbreaks. But many Wisconsin local authorities haven't shut facilities or mandated safeguards.
At the Smithfield plant in Cudahy, federal regulators and local officials did not always take firm steps to prevent harm, records show.
On March 27, four days after the first reported case at the plant, OSHA received two complaints about the facility. When an OSHA officer called the company, a Smithfield official reported the plant had some safeguards in place but wasn't providing masks and hadn't made changes to separate workers on the production lines.
OSHA closed the inquiry without inspecting the facility. At the time, the CDC didn't recommend masks for those who didn't have COVID-19 and didn't show symptoms. But the agency said employers should implement social distancing if recommended by state and local authorities. By then, Wisconsin's "safer at home" order mandated essential businesses ensure social distancing to the greatest extent possible.
Company officials had told OSHA they were working with the City of Cudahy health department to protect workers. But records show the city, at times, struggled to gain the firm's cooperation.
On April 9, city Health Officer Katie Lepak sent an email to Ian Pray, a CDC epidemiologist working for the state health department, saying that Smithfield leaders had told her a day earlier that nine workers infected wasn't “very much” in a workforce of 1,100. Lepak wrote that they told her the company was following CDC guidelines and had shut the lines for a day to clean.
“They stated they are essential and reported talking to Vice President Pence on Tuesday. They talked about how critical they are in the food supply chain,” Lepak wrote.
At the time, workers told the Journal Sentinel, the company hadn't yet provided face masks, and many employees were working less than 6 feet apart.
Two days later, 19 COVID-19 cases were linked to the Cudahy plant. Pray wrote to Lepak, raising concerns about the outbreak, noting that nearly 200 workers had tested positive at the Smithfield plant in South Dakota.
“I hope Smithfield is taking this seriously,” he wrote, adding that he hoped the situation in Cudahy “doesn't continue to spiral.”
The next day, on April 12, Lepak received two emails from workers' relatives and one from a worker's advocate. “Many employees fear for their lives but they have no choice because they still need to feed their family,” one email said.
Two days later, Lepak asked the company to partner to test workers with symptoms. It took Smithfield at least three days to agree.
On April 14, Lepak emailed a Smithfield manager, Phil Maher, saying city health officials were hearing workers were finding obstacles to getting tested and that the city would like to partner with the company to test workers with symptoms.
At 1:26 a.m. the next day, Lepak sent the manager another email, saying she hadn't yet received a response about testing the workers: “This is yet another plea for us to work together Phil.”
That day, Smithfield announced a voluntary closure of the plant that would start later that week, more than three weeks after the first cases.
Two days later, Lepak emailed Maher yet again, concerned about the lack of response to her request: “We are in a Public Health emergency and there is urgency around this matter.”
It's unclear when Smithfield agreed to partner on testing. On April 20, almost a week after Lepak first discussed the testing, the Smithfield manager said in an email that the company wanted all employees tested.
Maher didn't respond to requests for comment.
When asked why Smithfield had taken at least three days to respond to the city's request to help test workers with COVID-19 symptoms, both Lombardo, the company official, and representatives of MWWPR, a New York-based public relations agency working with Smithfield, did not directly answer the question.
Lombardo said: “Is it your view that three days was too long to coordinate mass testing of employees? Was three days too fast, in your view, to be sure we had all the protocols in place? About right?"
She wrote testing symptomatic employees is mandatory at Smithfield, but she did not say when that policy started.
In a news release in early May, Lepak cast the actions by the company and the local union positively: “Their cooperation with the public health investigation and initiative to install safety measures and temporarily close the plant helped to contain the spread of this virus.”
Lepak and Cudahy Mayor Thomas Pavlic didn't respond to questions about their handling of the outbreak.
Today, it's unknown how many plant workers have the disease. In early May, the number was 86. The company won't provide an update, and neither will the city of Cudahy.
And for three months, the Journal Sentinel has repeatedly asked state officials for the numbers.
They still haven't provided them.