US meat workers are quitting as virus-ridden plants reopen
America’s meat-processing plants are starting to reopen, but not all workers are showing up. Some still fear they’ll get sick after coronavirus outbreaks shut more than a dozen facilities last month. Employees are taking leave, paid and unpaid or just quitting.
At a JBS USA plant in Greeley, Colorado, absenteeism is running as high as 30%. Before the pandemic, it was about 13%. The company is paying about 10% of the workforce — people deemed vulnerable — to stay home. Others aren’t coming in because they are sick.
But some workers are staying home because they are “scared,” according to Kim Cordova, president of United Food & Commercial Workers Local 7 union, which represents workers at the plant. She couldn’t provide specific numbers but noted on a recent visit that production speeds at the plant were “really slow” because of the labor crunch.
Meat plants have been at the nexus of coronavirus hot spots across the rural heartland. The disease spread through plants in March and April as companies struggled to adapt their workplaces to new rules dictated by the pandemic. As absenteeism persists, the U.S. is at risk of continued meat shortages and higher prices, even after President Donald Trump signed an executive order to keep plants running.
JBS is following federal “guidance around safety and social distancing, and we’re doing everything possible to provide a safe working environment for our team members who have been eager to get back to work,” the company said in a statement to Bloomberg.
At the Colorado plant, JBS says it has given out masks and face shields and put up plexiglass barriers to separate people.
Workers still need higher quality protective equipment, and there are still areas where employees can’t social distance, Cordova said.
“If they don’t mitigate, we’re going to continue the cycle of workers dying and workers getting sick,” she said.
The company has had more success at its plant in Souderton, Pennsylvania, which also reopened recently and is running “beyond expectations,” JBS said.
Conditions at U.S. meat plants contributed to increased risk of infections, and ultimately more than 4,900 workers fell ill, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The agency cited difficulty maintaining social distancing and adhering to heightened cleaning and disinfection guidance among the factors that increased risks for workers. There were 20 deaths among employees as the virus spread to 115 meat plants across 19 states, data through late April showed.
Plant shutdowns have created bottlenecks in supply, which could continue amid absenteeism. Giant producers have such a stranglehold on output that it leaves few remedies when even a handful of facilities slow, leaving farmers with decreased options for their animals.
Even as U.S. pork processing picks up in the coming weeks, hog producers may be forced to euthanize as many as 7 million pigs in the second quarter, Will Sawyer, lead economist at CoBank, said in a report Tuesday. Meat supplies for retail grocery stores could shrink almost 30% by Memorial Day, leading to retail pork and beef price inflation as high as 20% relative to prices last year, he estimates.
Unions say many workers fear that new measures companies have put in place, including temperature scanners and face masks, aren’t enough to guarantee their safety as operations resume weeks or in some cases just days after a plant has idled.
“There’s a number of folks who have quit — and there may be others who decide not to go back,” said Kooper Caraway, president of Sioux Falls AFL-CIO, which represents 3,700 workers at Smithfield Foods Inc.’s South Dakota pork plant.
Smithfield’s South Dakota operation was among the first major facilities to shutter. The plant accounts for about 5% of the nation’s pork supply, and Chief Executive Ken Sullivan rang the alarm over meat shortages as he announced plans to close on April 12.
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