Human rights and labor experts describe those measures as only a start in addressing the dangers that meatpacking workers face. Even before the pandemic, one meat or poultry worker in the U.S. was sent to a hospital with an injury or lost a body part, on average, every other day, according to a“significantly higher” than other manufacturing jobs, they found.
PSSI also said it is"not involved in our customers’ production decisions” and that it has authority to “notify the customer of any unsafe conditions, and we do not hesitate to act in these situations."But some PSSI workers see a connection between high production speeds at food processing plants and equipment that doesn’t have required safety guards, which is a commonplace violation according to OSHA records and interviews.
Privately held, PSSI was purchased by the private equity firm Leonard Green & Partners LP for around $1 billion in 2014, according toPSSI said it has taken multiple steps to improve its accident rate since 2018, including hiring former OSHA officials and recording plants with a new monitoring system that can detect and send alerts about “operational irregularities.”
“I did things that put me in prison, and when I got out of prison, PSSI was there to give me a chance to make amends,” he said. “When we get to 120 and above, that’s where we start giving out TVs. That’s part of our plan to help people stay safe,” the employee recruiter said. PSSI responded by saying that advice “is flatly untrue. We do not tolerate violations when the safety of our employees is involved.”
“I had to argue all the time with the maintenance man to fix things for me,” said Carolyn Benito, who spent 2 1/2 years at a plant in West Virginia. She said she was demoted after she refused to return to work before finishing a 14-day quarantine for Covid-19. She had also become concerned about workers who didn’t seem to be properly trained.
Carlos Lynn’s decapitation in March 2020 was one of four fatalities PSSI reported to OSHA in the span of a year, a figure that “is extremely high and clearly the sign of a significant management problem,” said David Michaels, former head of OSHA in the Obama administration who is now a George Washington University professor.
PSSI reported two more fatalities in 2020, but OSHA closed investigations without issuing citations. A Department of Labor spokesman said one of the investigations was closed “after it was determined that the death was not occupationally related.”
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