Ever since slaughterhouses became coronavirus hot spots, the meat industry has been asking the Trump administration for help.
“This order tells them they need to stay open and they get cover,” said Howard Roth, the president of the National Pork Producers Council, who joined a call with meat executives, Trump, and Vice President Mike Pence on Wednesday morning. “This is the light at the end of the tunnel that the producers were desperately needing.”
Story continues“The industry has a lot of sway, and recent weeks have just shown what power they have,” said Tony Corbo, a senior lobbyist for Food & Water Watch, a watchdog group. “They somehow think we don’t have a constitutional right to advocate for our workers,” said Kim Cordova, president of Local 7 of the United Food and Commercial Workers.
When the Smithfield pork plant in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, became the nation’s largest virus hot spot in early April, the city’s mayor, Paul TenHaken, had a “heated” phone call with Smithfield’s chief executive, Ken Sullivan, TenHaken recalled. One measure that many health experts and plant workers say would help prevent the virus from spreading again is to slow down the production line. The slower that meat moves through a slaughterhouse, the fewer people are needed to cut and debone it, which would allow for more space between employees.
Lines in many of the plants that have reopened or haven’t closed are moving slower because fewer employees are showing up, the United Food and Commercial Workers said. But the union does not expect that the companies will agree to reduce their speeds permanently because it would hurt profits.
Not without workers they won't.