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Tensions are breaking out between employers and workers across the U.S. as some
companies push to keep producing during the coronavirus pandemic and some
employees push back over health concerns and other issues.
In recent days, plant workers have walked off the job at companies ranging from
poultry producer Perdue Farms Inc. to soda maker Refresco B.V. At Tyson Foods
Inc., workers petitioned for more paid sick leave. Some want more protective
equipment. Others have complained to regulators about unsafe conditions.
Warnings about social distancing and exposure have also surfaced new concerns,
especially when doing business in close quarters seems to conflict with
guidance from health officials about physical distancing.
“The next phase of concern is safety in the workplace,” said William Schaffner,
an infectious-disease specialist at Vanderbilt University.
Protections like physical spacing of employees are particularly important, said
Mr. Schaffner, because the virus spreads even from those who aren’t
symptomatic. Identifying sick workers by checking employees’ fever, he said,
“is helpful but not the complete story.”
Meatpacking, which is seeing increased demand as Americans batten down at home,
is one industry where workers have become concerned about being in proximity
while cutting carcasses and trimming meat. Some companies have spaced workers
farther apart and staggered shift starts and break times. Tyson and others have
begun offering employees masks and gloves, and taking their temperatures.
Earlier this week, the League of United Latin American Citizens, a Hispanic
civil-rights group, asked the federal Occupational Safety and Health
Administration for broader guidance on safety equipment, paid sick leave and
regular health checks for plant employees. A significant share of
meatpacking-plant employees are immigrants.
Last week, about two dozen workers at a Perdue Farms chicken plant walked off
their jobs in Georgia, complaining that the company wasn’t doing enough to
prevent coronavirus infection, and not paying them enough. Perdue said that
after speaking with management, most of the employees returned to work. The
Perdue plant isn’t represented by a union.
Perdue said it had already boosted plant sanitation and extended hours for its
on-site wellness centers, which are free for employees and their families. It
has also temporarily increased pay for hourly plant workers, and waived a
waiting period to get short-term disability benefits, a spokeswoman said. The
company is also offering free chicken to employees.
It is unusual for nonunion employees to walk off jobs, particularly immigrant
workers in meatpacking and other industries. “I was floored,” said Deborah
Berkowitz, a former U.S. OSHA official and poultry-worker safety advocate. “The
workers have very few safety rights if they refuse to work.”
In Arkansas, a group called Venceremos, which was founded last year and works
with poultry workers, has called on Tyson to expand pay for workers who have to
stay home sick, saying the company’s existing policy doesn’t go far enough. In
an interview, a worker complained about jam-packed factory-production lines,
not enough hand sanitizer and crowded lines for worker bathrooms.
A Tyson spokesman said the company is committed to hearing out employees’
concerns, and maintains an anonymous ethics helpline. He said problems with
hand sanitizer and bathroom lines haven’t been raised.
Tyson, which produces one in 5 pounds of all beef, pork and chicken produced
daily in the U.S., said it has seen a small number of employees test positive
for Covid-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus. The company has
directed employees who might have had contact with infected colleagues to
self-quarantine, has notified other workers of positive cases and is checking
workers’ temperatures before shifts, the spokesman said. In some plant break
rooms, colored dots have been placed on chairs to help Tyson staff sit the
recommended distance apart.
Experts said they don’t worry about transmitting the virus through food, but
they say workplace conditions risk creating additional coronavirus hot spots
and could potentially slow food and other production.
In Wharton, N.J., workers at a Refresco bottling plant walked out on March 21
after a manager berated an employee who was worried about the coronavirus and
reported himself as feeling ill, a worker at the plant said. On March 27, the
workers tried to deliver a letter addressing their concerns to the human
-resources department, but it wasn’t accepted and they had to email it to upper
management. Re
