Workers at meat plants blamed for virus spread
MINNEAPOLIS — As coronavirus hot spots erupted at major U.S. meatpacking plants, experts criticized extremely tight working conditions that made the factories natural high-risk contagion locations. But some Midwestern politicians have pointed the finger at the workers’ living conditions, suggesting crowded homes bear some blame.
The comments — including a Wisconsin Supreme Court justice’s remark that an outbreak didn’t seem to have come from “regular folks” — outraged workers and advocates, who slammed them as elitist and critical of immigrants who make up a big share of America’s meatpacking workforce.
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, a Republican, generated ire last month when discussing the closure of a Smithfield pork plant in Sioux Falls that infected 1,000 employees and people who came in contact with the workers, saying “99% of what’s going on today wasn’t happening inside the facility.”
The spread of the virus happened “more at home, where these employees were going home and spreading some of the virus because a lot of these folks who work at this plant live in the community, the same building, sometimes in the same apartment,” she said on Fox News.
Noem’s comments created a foundation for blaming outbreaks on the meatpackers’ home lives instead of conditions at plants, where employees often worked shoulder to shoulder with little to no protective gear as U.S. cases surged, said Taneeza Islam, who runs the refugee and immigrant support group South Dakota Voices for Peace.
Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts, also a Republican, took heat for remarks last month about “people concentrated together” after a meatpacking plant virus outbreak in his state.
Many of Smithfield’s Sioux Falls employees live in well-maintained apartment complexes near the plant, some in multigenerational homes so older family members can be cared for. Others have single-family units.
Noem said she made her comments after the Sioux Falls plant closed and public health officials’ focus shifted to stopping the outbreak where the workers lived.
In Nebraska, meatpacking worker advocates disputed Ricketts’ suggestion that an outbreak at the Tyson Foods beef plant in Dakota City, where hundreds were infected, could have happened because of crowded worker households.
“The governor’s statement that this is a community issue is completely untrue,” said Rose Godinez, legal counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union of Nebraska, and the daughter of retired meatpacking workers.
She said plant workers told her that most employees who tested positive own or rent their homes and in general do not live in crowded, small dwellings.
President Donald Trump recently ordered meat companies to stay open, and USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue issued a statement Friday applauding “the safe reopening” of major plants in 10 states.
The United Food and Commercial Workers responded that the administration is rushing to reopen plants without assuring worker safety, citing at least 30 worker deaths.