US lacks mandatory safety measures to protect meat workers from COVID-19: media

NEW YORK -- The United States "has yet to impose any mandatory safety measures" on meat plants to protect their workers from contracting COVID-19, issuing only voluntary guidelines, Bloomberg reported Monday.

The US federal government has not enacted enforceable protocols for the safety of this group in high risk, leaving meatpackers no choice but to take their own safety measures, including installing plexiglass barriers and issuing protective equipment, said the New York-headquartered news agency.

Federal fines against major meat processors have been less than 16,000 US dollars, decried as paltry by worker advocates.

This month, the US Department of Labor fined Smithfield Foods Inc. 13,494 dollars and JBS SA 15,615 dollars, the first sanctions issued by the US government against meat plants in connection with COVID-19. Two senators, a former safety official and a major national union denounced regulators' efforts as being inadequate.

Coronavirus infections spread rapidly among US meat workers in March and April, prompting major companies to shutter before US President Donald Trump issued the order to keep them open in late April.

At least 42,606 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 203 related deaths among meatpacking workers have been reported through Friday, according to a tabulation of local news reports by the Food & Environment Reporting Network.

The US response "has been a mess," James Ritchie, assistant general secretary of the Geneva-based International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers' Associations, was quoted by Bloomberg as saying.

Trump's order has been "downright dangerous" since it failed to come with any US federal agency issuing enforceable safety rules, Ritchie said.

Labor unions' lobbying efforts to include mandatory coronavirus safety measures are "an uphill battle," Bloomberg reported, citing Rebecca Reindel, occupational safety and health director for the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations.

Efforts for better safety regulations are hampered because the employees are often minorities and immigrants who, unlike other high-risk professions such as doctors, are working out of sight of the public.

"They face a lot of barriers," Reindel said. "You have a lot of workers of color. You have a lot of immigrant workers. You have a lot that don't know their safety and health rights."