Why did the Trump administration invoke the Defense Production Act on April 28 to keep meat processing plants open? Answer: in order to shield the plant owners from liability suits, including from employees, very many of whom are immigrants. I posted about this on April 20 here.

The Wall Street Journal reported that “White House officials said that they feared as much as 80% of the industry’s processing capacity could have been shut down without action from the administration.”

Michael Duff, a professor at Wyoming University’s College of Law and a blogger on employee rights, cites the pertinent court decisions which affirm the law’s ability to remove threats of tort actions.

The pandemic is sweeping through the nation’s meat processing industry. Infected workers have been reported in South Dakots, Missouri, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Kansas, Colorado, Georgia, Texas, Washington, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania. A major share of the country’s poultry, beef and pork product production is shutting down.

Meat processing workers, half or more of whom are foreign-born, work side by side. Labor advocates say that they have not seen any plant undertake as yet safe practices related to the pandemic.

I have followed the situation in Iowa, there the apparently first verified case of an infected meat processing worker showed up three weeks ago in Marshalltown, where a JBS (formerly Swift) plant employs about 2,000 persons. As of today. JBS has shut down plants in Minnesota, Colorado, and Pennsylvania. Smithfield has shut down plants in at least South Dakota, Missouri and Wisconsin.

The first plant in Iowa to shut down was Tyson’s plant in Columbus Junction, where over one hundred workers were diagnosed with the virus and two died.

I spoke with several people in Iowa, including Mark Cooper, Rafael Morataya and Joe Enriquez Henry, president of the Des Moines chapter of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC). Within 250 miles of Des Moines are plants that produce 70% of the country’s pork products. Henry estimates that three quarters of the workers in these plants are foreign born. Most are from Latin America, but they also include Africans and Asians.

Henry says that OHSA did not respond to three letters, the first one sent three weeks ago. A letter signed by 66 organizations was sent to Governor Kim Reynolds on April 15.

Henry estimates that three or four Iowa plants were closed as of April 20. He says that safety protections are straightforward – space the workers out, and slow down the pace to enable workers to work eight hours with masks on.

Photo: Earl Dotter

On March 20, the Centers for Disease Control issued a largely unnoticed but sweeping order authorizing the summary expulsion of noncitizens arriving at the Mexican border without valid documents. It allows all others with proper papers to pass through.

The CDC Order is based on an emergency Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Interim Final Rule issued simultaneously with the Order under the authority of an obscure provision of the 1944 Public Health Service Act. Section 362 of that Act authorizes the Surgeon General to suspend “introduction of persons or goods” into the United States on public health grounds.

There is no requirement that a barred person actually be infected or contagious, or that the individuals themselves actually pose a danger to public health. And under the rule no individualized determination is required.

For more than a year, the administration has sought unsuccessfully to undo the asylum system at the southern border claiming that exigencies and limited government resources compel abrogating rights and protections for refugees and other noncitizens.

From here.

Researchers interviewed immigrant dairy workers in Colorado. 29% had sustained at least one work injury in the past year (official government average for diary workers is 6%). About 60% were caused by cows. A third did not tell their supervisor. Only 20% received medical care. One third had not received any safety training. Half had not told their doctor that they worked at a dairy farm.

Background: Studies of work injuries worldwide show a consistent pattern of higher occupational morbidity and mortality among immigrant workers.

A study of occupational fatalities of Hispanic construction workers in the U.S. from 1992 to 2000 found that Hispanics constituted 15% of construction workers in 2000 but suffered 23.5% of fatal construction injuries.

Global data on immigration and occupational injury are limited but tend to confirm the findings from U.S. studies. An Australian study of occupational fatalities found increased rates among foreign-born workers within 5 years of immigration.

Many investigators have speculated on the causes of increased occupational fatalities among immigrant workers. Common explanations include the assignment of more hazardous tasks to immigrant workers, failure of employers to invest in safety training and equipment, greater
risk-taking by immigrant workers, and failure to complain about unsafe conditions by workers who may have precarious job status.

(Dairy information from Lauren Mengre-Ogle et al, Occupational safety and health of foreign born Latinx dairy workers in Colorado. American Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine January 2019. Background information from Marc Shenker, A global perspective of migration and occupational Health. American Journal of Industrial Medicine, 2010)

On April 5, 97 people were arrested and detained in a family-run meatpacking plant in Bean Station, TN. The company is called Southeastern Provision. It was the country’s largest immigration workplace raid since the Postville IA raid in 2008. Ninety-seven persons were arrested and are now facing deportation, and as of April 12, 54 of them were currently detained. Thirty-two were released from custody but remain in removal proceedings. Eleven are being held on state and federal charges. (From the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition)

As of April 12, it was known that 500 to 600 children were absent from school in Morristown, a 30,000 population city, on the Friday that followed the raid. 160 children had parents who were arrested and now possibly face deportation. 108 TN children had parents who are now detained in Louisiana

According to a Washington Post story on April 6, in a federal affidavit, IRS Special Agent Nicholas R. Worsham said the family-run plant is under criminal investigation for allegedly evading taxes, filing false tax returns and hiring immigrants in the country illegally.

He alleged the facility failed to report $8.4 million in wages and to pay at least $2.5 million in payroll taxes for dozens of undocumented workers.

Federal agents began investigating the company months ago after Citizens Bank employees noticed that Southeastern Provision was withdrawing large sums of cash every week — more than $25 million since 2008. Worsham said the plant hired undocumented workers who were paid in cash and subject to harsh conditions, including long hours without overtime and exposure to bleach and other chemicals without protective eyewear.

Also see New Yorker article: “In Morristown, a larger town of thirty thousand people, the raid was catastrophic news. Families’ worst fear had come true: husbands, fathers, wives, mothers—gone. The following day, more than five hundred students were reported absent from area schools, kept home out of a combination of fear, anxiety, and confusion. The raid also set off a whirl of activity, as relatives of those arrested gathered each day at a church in the center of town to meet with advocacy groups and discuss their legal options.”

Southeastern Provision was the third largest employer in Grainger County.

Past large raid in 2018: On January 9, ICE did a sweep of 7-11 stores. ICE said its agents showed up at 98 stores and made 21 arrests, describing the operation as a warning to other companies that may have unauthorized workers on their payroll.

Largest raid since 2000: On May 12, 2008 ICE raided the Agriproccessors plant in Postville, IA, said to be with its 1,000 odd employees the largest kosher meat processing facility in the world. ICE arrested 389 workers for illegal status. This was heralded as the largest ICE raid ever.

Yes.

Rousmaniere 2017

About half of hired farm workers and half of hotel maids are foreign born, and half of them are unauthorized. Immigrants account for 13 percent of our entire population, but a third of all workers hold low-paid, often injury-prone jobs hidden from the public like food prep and material packaging. But only 15 percent of low-paid jobs are those that engage with the public, such as retail sales.

I estimate that a typical immigrant with little formal education has a career path that is fraught with twice the risk of work injury as the career path of a poorly educated native-born American.

Orrenius and Zavodny, 2009

Our results indicate that differences in observable characteristics, such as English ability and education, play important roles in the tendency of immigrants to work in riskier jobs. Workers’ ability to speak English is inversely related to their industry injury and fatality rates, indicating that immigrants who speak English fluently work in safer jobs. The CDC (2008) attributed the high number of work-related deaths among foreign-born Hispanics in part to inadequate knowledge of safety hazards and inadequate training and supervision of workers, which are often exacerbated by language and literacy problems.

Byler 2013

In 2013, Hispanic workers represented about 15% of FTEs in all industries and just over half were foreign born. However, in the construction industry, they represented 25% of all FTEs and almost three-fourths were foreign born. In our study, we found high fatal TBI [traumatic brain injury] rates among Hispanic and foreign-born workers, separately. When fatal TBI rates among Hispanics were analyzed by nativity, the foreign-born rate was significantly higher than the native-born rate.