Source: Michael Fielding, MEATINGPLACE, 2/11/16
Arkansas poultry workers earn approximately $28,792 per year — well below living wage for a family of four ($71,000) even in a household with two adults earning a total of $57,584 — and they often find that their wages “disappear.”
This, according to a study led by the Northwest Arkansas Workers’ Justice Center (NWAWJC), a nonprofit advocacy group.
Chris Benner, a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, first conducted an analysis of government data of worker demographics in regard to race, gender and distribution of workers in poultry plants of various sizes. The NWAWJC then conducted 500 surveys of poultry processing workers from Tyson, Cargill, George’s, Ozark Mountain Poultry, Butterball, Simmons, Pilgrim’s Pride, Southeast Poultry, Wayne’s Farm, as well as small poultry farms and hatcheries.
Among the findings:
• Nine percent of workers have earned sick leave. Another 38 percent reported having unpaid sick leave, often on a points system that the group said discourages workers from taking time off. A full 32 percent report that they have no sick leave at all.
• Forty-four percent reported being verbally or sexually harassed.
• Foreign-born and Latino workers reported both the longest average tenure as poultry workers in addition to the lowest rates of being offered promotions (94 percent of Latino workers were not offered a promotion; 92 percent of foreign-born workers were not offered a promotion).
• Thirty-two percent reported that they or someone they knew was punished for reporting health and safety or other issues to a supervisor.
Numbers don’t add up, industry says
The report noted that nearly six out of ten workers surveyed (59 percent) reported that they suffered from injuries or health issues while working at the poultry plant, the most common being cuts, falls and headaches.
Industry groups aren’t buying the numbers. The incidence of occupational injuries and illnesses in the poultry sector’s slaughter and processing workforce has fallen by 81 percent in the last 20 years and continues to decline, according to the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) “2014 Injury and Illness Report.”
“In fact, when you compare apples to apples, our injury and illness rate of 4.3 is better than all food manufacturing, and is on par with all manufacturing, yet decreasing at a much faster rate,” NCC spokesman Tom Super told Meatingplace.
He defended the industry’s push to implement both ergonomics principles and the latest technologies to prevent workplace injuries and illnesses such as musculoskeletal disorders like carpal tunnel syndrome.
Tyson Foods requires workers to report any workplace injury or illness, the company said in a statement emailed to Meatingplace.
Others took issue with some of the findings that allege poor work conditions with few company benefits.
“We provide benefits beyond those required including paid vacation, multiple breaks each shift, tuition reimbursement, classes in English as a second language and others,” according to Mike Martin, spokesman for Cargill, which operates just one facility in northwest Arkansas. “We also provide bathroom breaks as needed and short-term disability and FMLA after a short qualifying period.”
He said that the majority of employees either are paid with a paycheck or their pay is deposited directly into their bank or credit union accounts.
Wages challenged, refuted
Among its recommendations, the NWAWJC wrote that lawmakers should increase enforcement of wage and hour laws and that paid sick leave should be guaranteed for all workers.
Tyson Foods said its has the highest-paying entry-level jobs in many of the communities in which its poultry plants are located, and in October, the company increased the hourly pay at most of its chicken plants.
The average hourly pay for poultry workers who have been on the job for more than a year is $12 an hour, which is more than two-thirds higher than the $7.25 federal minimum wage and higher than all state minimum wages.
Some hourly production workers make more than $16 an hour, while some maintenance jobs pay as much as $23 and some refrigeration jobs earn $26 an hour, according to Tyson.
“We require all team members who have been employed for 59 days to have health care coverage through either the company-sponsored health plan or through a family member’s plan. We offer health, life, dental, vision and prescription drug benefits to our Team Members and their families,” the company said in the statement.
Super also took issue with the low-wage charge. “We have to compete for the workforce in the communities where we operate, therefore we have to offer competitive wages, in addition to benefits,” he said. “While policies differ from company to company, in most cases, our line workers make more than 150 percent of the federal minimum wage, in addition to benefits and some form of paid time off.”
Queries to other companies named in the report went unanswered at press time.
The report also touched on the issue of line speeds, although it simply recommended that line speeds “should be regulated and reduced, to reduce injury and contamination.”
In December, a U.S. Court of Appeals found that a challenge to revised USDA poultry inspection rules did not successfully prove that the New Poultry Inspection System would endanger the health of a North Carolina doctor, who filed the suit with the group Food and Water Watch Inc.
The ruling by the Washington, D.C., court upheld a lower court finding that dismissed the challenge to rules that originally would have increased poultry plant inspection-line speeds to up to 175 chickens per minute. The agency kept that rate at a maximum of 140 birds after some of the 250,000 public comments on the proposal sought a rate reduction.
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