Meatpacking industry could face changes under Biden
Advocates for American meatpacking workers, sacrificed during the pandemic by an industry that has President Donald Trump’s ear, offered tentative hope for a heavier hand under Joe Biden.
Biden, who takes office Jan. 20, won the presidential election on a campaign promise to stop the spread of the coronavirus. The spread took hold in meatpacking plants this spring and since has infected more than 42,000 workers and killed at least 221.
The Trump administration weakened safety guidelines and signed an executive order to keep plants open at the request of industry officials, even as outbreaks ravaged the plants.
Worker advocates, experts and former government officials said Biden could, and should, direct his agencies to implement and enforce strict safety measures to protect worker health.
“As a candidate, Joe Biden was fairly critical and spoke of the need for greater protections for workers,” said Jill Krueger, Northern Region director for The Network for Public Health Law. “I think we can anticipate some potentially fairly significant changes from a new administration.”
Those changes must start, those sources said, with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, which sits under the Department of Labor.
OSHA, tasked with protecting workers, has not enforced its own recommendations, allowing companies to continue crowding workers. Although nearly 500 plants have had outbreaks, OSHA has fined six.
“Thousands of meatpacking workers contracted COVID-19 because giant meatpackers refused to lose a single dollar slowing down line speeds to keep workers safe, and the Trump administration’s (Department of Labor) accommodated them at every turn,” said U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, DMass.
“A Biden administration can immediately restore OSHA to serve workers, not big corporations – starting by issuing enforceable health and safety standards for COVID-19, conducting on-site inspections, and ramping up enforcement activity so that giant companies don’t escape accountability for workplace conditions that expose workers to serious harm and death,” Warren said.
Biden has not been specific about how he will direct his agencies – including OSHA, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Department of Agriculture – to oversee the industry’s handling of the coronavirus. His transition team did not respond to interview requests.
But Biden has left some hints. He previously urged Trump to adopt a permanent infectious-disease standard to protect front-line workers. He also said Trump should double the number of OSHA inspectors to provide more oversight.
In May, after meatpacking plants became COVID-19 hot spots, Biden said workers should be spaced 6 feet apart in plants – which is still not happening industry-wide – and should receive proper protective equipment.
“No worker’s life is worth my getting a cheaper hamburger,” Biden told Yahoo News. “We don’t treat the workers well at all across the board. We have obligations to workers, we have obligations to the community.”
Advocates also pointed to the people Biden named to his agency review teams as an indication of his priorities.
Review teams study and evaluate the operations of each agency to prepare for a transition of power. Although the Trump administration has largely ignored the concerns of meatpacking employees, Biden put worker advocates on teams reviewing agencies that oversee meatpacking plants.