HEART-BREAKING LOSS
Nga Nguyen, the grieving husband of Hiep Bui Nguyen, a Cargill worker who died from COVID-19, said he has not received any expression of condolence from management. The plant reopened Monday after a two-week shutdown to deal with the outbreak.
On Cargill’s fabrication floor, Hiep Bui was called Candy Momma.
Those who knew her and loved her said she was just as sweet and uplifting as the bonbons she so liberally distributed to everyone around her.
On Monday, a few hours after the Cargill meat packing plant in High River reopened — following a two-week shutdown to deal with North America’s largest workplace outbreak of COVID-19 — a small tribute to Bui was held, putting a face and a name to the woman who died from the dreaded disease.
Bui, 67, started feeling sick part way through her shift on Thursday, April 16, but she finished her entire shift, standing for eight hours. On Friday, she was too sick to go to work. On Saturday she was admitted to a Calgary hospital and by Sunday she was dead.
The day after Bui died, on Monday, April 20, the plant where she had worked since 1996 — located about 50 kilometres south of Calgary — was closed down for two weeks to help bring its outbreak under control.
By then it was too late for too many. Almost half of Cargill’s 2,000 employees — 936 — have tested positive for COVID-19 and another 609 cases are linked to those employees. The JBS meat packing plant in Brooks has 469 confirmed cases with another
529 people getting infected from the outbreak. More than 43 per cent of all of Alberta’s 5,836 cases are traced to the two work sites.
Nga Nguyen, Bui’s grieving husband of 23 years, said that he has not received any expression of condolence from Cargill management for the loss of his beloved wife and their longtime employee.
“I hope that Cargill will be able to control the safety at the plant so that there will not be any more victims like my wife,” he said.
“She was a wonderful wife,” he said at a news conference set up by Action Dignity, a not-for-profit group that helps immigrants integrate into Alberta.
“She spoiled me. She never argued with me,” Nguyen said. “Whenever I wanted something she would buy it at all cost,” the slightly built 67-year-old widower said through a Vietnamese interpreter on the grass of Forest Lawn High School, which is near the home the couple shared.
Marichu Antonio, the executive director of Action Dignity, says the organization gave a small amount of money to Nguyen and will continue to give him any earmarked donations sent to the charity for him.
Thomas Hesse, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, Local 401, gave a more sizable donation, that will help Nguyen pay for Bui’s cremation.
“We wanted to ensure Bui would become known to Albertans as more than a COVID-19 statistic, to help people understand that these workers are not just numbers but hard-working, loving people who made a big difference to many, who put food on our tables and who deserve to be treated with respect and care,” said Antonio.
Nguyen said he and his wife were refugees from the Vietnam War and married in 1993 following many years of hardship and suffering.
“We both escaped Vietnam on the same boat and we landed in the same refugee camp,” he added, his sad eyes smiling slightly at the memory. “She got accepted (to Canada) first, a year before I was, and then, of course, we kept communicating, and we met here again and we got married.”
Pearnel, one of her work colleagues remembered Bui as a “beautiful soul.”
“My job requires me to walk the floor each morning, checking each work station. I always made a point to walk past her work station near the end because I always wanted to finish in a good mood,” said Pearnel, in a statement read out loud at the tribute event. “I will always remember her giving candy to me and my uncle.”
As for Nguyen, he said since they never had children he’s now all alone.
“I’m still numb and very lost. I don’t know what to do,” he said. “I just want to end my life. I want to find a way to join my wife.”
Several hours earlier, despite colourful banners, honking horns of support and a somewhat festive atmosphere from about 100 union protesters, a steady stream of workers driving into the Cargill meat packing plant made for a grim parade.
Hundreds of tense workers returned to the site of Canada’s largest COVID-19 outbreak, driving into the fenced-off parking lot wearing mostly homemade masks or previously used surgical masks. It was the first time they’d returned since the plant closed following Bui’s death.
“I’m very nervous,” said Nornalio Tolosa, 41, as he stopped to accept free cloth masks from the union, emblazoned with the words “Safety First.”
The union is seeking a stopwork order against Cargill. Hearings before the Labour Relations Board began on the weekend and were continuing even as the plant reopened.
“I have tested negative for the virus but I feel like it’s just a matter of time,” said Tolosa, the father of two teenagers.
Had he ever received a mask from Cargill, even after the first case of COVID-19 presented itself on April 6?
“They’ve never given me a mask,” he said. “Only the managers wore a proper mask, which made us all worry even more. We saw people not showing up for work and we heard they were sick with the virus. Then the managers started wearing masks and face shields but the workers got nothing,” said the nine-year employee who works on what is officially called the harvest floor, but staff colloquially call the kill floor.
Nathaniel Pascua, 52, rolls down the window of his shiny, white pickup truck to accept a packet of free cloth masks and he does not look well. His brown eyes are bloodshot and glassy.
He says he was called by AHS officials who told him he tested negative for the novel coronavirus and that it’s safe for him to return to work.
“I’m following orders to show up but I fear that I am positive now. I have a temperature and have lost my sense of smell and taste so I am very afraid of what’s coming for me and my family. I feel like this is a nightmare,” he said.
Cargill’s screening process obviously worked. His temperature was taken and Pascua was sent home.
Workers who become sick with COVID-19 get two weeks of sick pay regardless of how ill the disease makes them.
Hesse said the union conducted a recent poll of 600 staff at the plant and 85 per cent said they were afraid to return to work.
“Cargill has really brought a lot of shame to Alberta and Alberta beef,” said Hesse.
“We want to see this industry operate; we want to see the ranchers prosper; I want to eat beef; workers want to work safely; and, that could have happened if health authorities had done their jobs properly and Cargill did the right thing and shut this plant down on April 6 when that first case was found,” said Hesse.
Had that happened, perhaps Bui would have been at her regular work station Monday — now equipped with new plastic barriers separating workers — with her big smile and a pocket full of candies, replacing the bitter taste we are all left with now.