Elbow to elbow:' North America meat plant workers fall ill, walk off jobs

Reuters ^ | 4/13/20 | Tom Polansek, Rod Nickel

[BobL]

Hard to see how we were going to avoid food shortages, given both the working and living conditions of those who process food.

Being a non-FluBro, I, of course, obtained the necessary storage capability to ride out the upcoming shortages.

[blam]

"Time to add hunger to the list of inconveniences in Americans lives"

Someone has already said that we'll have food shortages this winter. I'm slowly preparing now.

[Magnatron]

A lot of this stuff is union organizing crap. Same thing with the Facebook messages from Home Depot workers saying people shouldn’t shop for building supplies, or Amazon workers protesting their work requirements.

[shanover]

It is widely known that a good portion of meat packing is by illegals and “made in China” or owned by China. Go figure. It just makes me sick.

[JBW1949]

To all:

Thanks, folks...I got it with the cntrl+.....

[21twelve]

“It just makes me sick.”

Let’s hope not!

[Lizavetta]

Until someone documents what proportion are illegal aliens, I’ll suspend my tears.

And of those illegal aliens, how many are using a stolen ID.

[moovova]

Yum! We’re big on Italian sausage around here, but I love sausage in general.

[Aqua225]

Disagree.

As a company, when you decide to keep the production accelerator pressed to the floor during a pandemic, you buy the PPE. And plenty of it.

The government hasn’t been recommending face masks until recently.

Where have you been? I see a date of 4/3, and I DON’T see facemasks available anywhere.

By any chance, are you upper management in the USA for Smithfield?

[familyop]

"I’ve been in the grocery stores and the checker will cough or sneeze blow their nose and I ask them are you sick? They say yea maybe. I say to them if your sick stay home. Your getting other people sick and some could die!"

In the largest grocery chains, policies dictated that employees stay home when sick. In person, management made it clear that they had better work when sick.

Until sometime in the past couple of weeks, employees were forbidden from wearing their own gloves with the excuse that they would panic customers. I know some of those employees. It was clear that masks owned by employees were forbidden, too.

Now CEOs of meat packing companies are causing the worst kind of panic. Here's one who fomented hysteria over a two-week closing of only one plant out of many.

Smithfield Shutting US Pork Plant Indefinitely, Warns of Meat Shortages during Pandemic
Reuters
April 13, 2020
https://www.voanews.com/science-health/coronavirus-outbreak/smithfield-shutting-us-pork-plant-indefinitely-warns-meat
"'It is impossible to keep our grocery stores stocked if our plants are not running,' Smithfield Chief Executive Ken Sullivan said in a statement on Sunday. 'These facility closures will also have severe, perhaps disastrous, repercussions for many in the supply chain, first and foremost our nation's livestock farmers.'...'We have a stark choice as a nation: we are either going to produce food or not, even in the face of COVID-19,' he said."

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were nearly 520,000 people employed in the meat packing industry in 2001, so there are probably thousands of meat packing plants. There's no meat shortage except the shortage and price gouging caused by the hysteria provoked by the few crooks in the industry.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

Just went to two local grocery stores the last two days. Both meat counters full. No shortages in them.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

Press the CTRL button and hold it down. Then roll the scroll wheel on your mouse.

[Woodman]

Ctrl+0 brings everything back to the default size.

[TribalPrincess2U]

Yes it does.

[tallyhoe]

By any chance, are you upper management in the USA for Smithfield?

Yea right.. I’m am just trying to say that People have to stand on their own two feet do their own thinking don’t rely so much on government.. Government got us into this mess.. Wearing a scarf is not expensive unless there has been a run on them. Look at my name and check out where I am.. Is Smithfield based in Washington? I think South Dakota..

[trebb]

Hold the ctrl key and scroll the mouse wheel...

[Fury]

Quintupled!!!!

[Macoozie]

“For example, picking strawberries.”

Because you want strawberries for pennies, we have to import an effin army of leaching pickers?

That’s one of the most unsound justifications I have ever read. Most crops can be set up and established to be harvested automation. Takes a bit of work to get the planting and fields arranged correctly.

Strawberries will get there. Until then, hire and pay employees. Let the market work. There will certainly be new cultivars more amenable to automated harvesting.

But having SLAVES in America for your strawberries is immoral, AND unnecessary.

[Balding_Eagle]

You took me out of context, you forgot this, which apparently needed to be directed at you by name:

"And to you assholes who always wrongly accuse me of supporting illegals when I point out the above, go get F****D!"

Let me know if you don't understand who and what I meant by the above.

[Macoozie]

Nothing out of context here.

Strawberries need to be harvested.
You don’t want illegals.
But the first is needed for the second.

I get your point, but strawberries are a bad case-in-point.

Can’t harvest without hordes of illegal pickers, not economically viable to hire pickers, don’t grow it here.
Grow something else or maybe . . . develop a new cultivar for automated harvesting.

Raise the price to pay for the labor. Folks may discover their local farmers have some good options, instead of industrial behemouths.

Just about the same with everything else.