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Safety in meat packing industries
Safety in meat packing industries
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Would you continue to eat meat if you knew the horrors that workers in meatpacking plants must? There are many serious safety and health hazards in the meatpacking industry. These hazards include exposure to high noise levels, dangerous equipment, slippery floors, musculoskeletal disorders, and hazardous chemicals. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of work related injuries in the meatpacking industry is three time higher than the national average (Bureau of Labor Statistics). Should OSHA have stricted penalties on companies with high injury/death tolls, what should they do companies who employ illegal immigrants, and are the safeground they have in place effective.
However, the law requires that employers must provide
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For some companies yes, they follow the guidelines and 61 percent of executives said they saved three dollars or more for every one dollar they spent on safety programs (Hatch). Taking this voluntary steps to protect workers insures a more productive work environment and would help reduce workplace injuries due to company negligence. Some of the safegrounds OSHA says a company can take are posting written safety and health policy around the workplace, appoint an employee to manage the policymaking on safety and health issues, and have meetings about employee safety and health" (.gov). But for companies that would reather pay the fine than fix the problem they will go promote jobs to get cheap and …show more content…
Instead of pushing for criminal prosecution, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration fined the family because the founder and had just died and the new owner said there would be major changes. It happened again thirteen years later and the family once again pursued help from OSHA only for Occupational Safety and Health Administration not to push for criminal charges (Hatch). This can be an example of how OSHA has been ran with a lenient hand.OSHA Administrator John Henshaw says "The fine is the same for a serious violation whether workers die or not. But the fact is, all we can do is cite for the violation or the hazard,". (Hatch) "The most companies will get for the death of an employee is, a maximum fine of $500,000 and for an individual is six months in prison or a maximum fine of $250,000 (Hatch)." Do you think that the people investgating this case think about these people familines and how they may felt knowing or unknowingly knowing that this company killed their love one and all they got was a warning, or maybe a fine. And most companies like McWane Inc would where just play the fine then fix the things in there factorys. But there are individuals and
It is not just the animals who are being treated wrongly. The workers are vulnerable and suffer from injuries on a daily basis. This workforce requires so much protection, such as chainmail outfits to protect themselves from tools. From cuts, sprains, to amputations, “ The injury rate in a slaughterhouse is about three times higher than the rate in a typical American factory.” (238). Many immigrants come to the states, some illegally. Companies give their supervisors bonuses when they have little reported injuries as a reward for a spectacular job. Regardless, these supervisors do not make attempts to make the work environment safer. They threaten the employees with their jobs. They will put injured employees on easier shifts to heal so it will not look suspicious as to why they are in pain. Next to failing to report injuries, women in the slaughterhouses suffer from sexual assault. Male coworkers pressure women into dating and sex. Reported cases include men using animal parts on them in an explicit manner, making work another kind of nightmare. All this corruption and lack of respect for workers is all for a cheap meal people buy when they have the
...h and safety laws have been disregarded in the slaughterhouses, causing a number of deaths. Also, there is a great deal of corruption in the slaughterhouses where workers are being threatened or lied to, especially about their injuries. I couldn’t imagine a factory not providing any type of reimbursement if anybody got hurt on the job.
Rehrig Pacific Company has been in business since 1913. Over 100 years in business, family owned and operated since then. Now on its 5 generation of owners. Rehrig Pacific has been in business since before the creation of OSHA and the OSH act of 1970. For years Rehrig worked and produced products and did their best to provide a safe workplace for their employees as they saw as extended family. There were many things done in the past that would not be okay to do in today’s safety world. Safety guards on machines were not used, at many times taken off to increase productivity and efficiency. Employees would climb on top of equipment was part of
Workers are also mistreated. They are underpaid even though the meat industry is one of ...
In the early twentieth century, at the height of the progressive movement, “Muckrakers” had uncovered many scandals and wrong doings in America, but none as big the scandals of Americas meatpacking industry. Rights and responsibilities were blatantly ignored by the industry in an attempt to turn out as much profit as possible. The meat packers did not care if poor working conditions led to sickness and death. They also did not care if the spoiled meat they sold was killing people. The following paper will discuss the many ways that rights and responsibilities were not being fulfilled by the meat packing industry.
Safety rules and regulations can reduce or eliminate unsafe behaviors. Safety rules are designed to reduce or eliminate the risk of workplace injuries. Safety rules may consist of eliminating hazards, policies to protect its employees, and workers must follow these rules (Bernardin & Russell, 2013). It might include policies on work behavior, guidelines, rules on workplace safety, and instructions on ho...
Almost every angle of the food industry can be considered dangerous. It is dangerous to make the food, as a meatpacking job is one that is viewed as having abnormally high risks; however when the food is handed over a counter on a tray or prepared in a family of four’s kitchen, it poses a huge risk to humankind. Foodborne illnesses are all too common and almost everybody has the possiblity of contracting a foodborne illness. These are life threatening diseases that need to be monitored and regulated; therefore the enforcement of government regulations in the fast food industry could potentially save many lives that are lost annually due to the numerous factors that need regulation.
“I wished to frighten the country by a picture of what its industrial masters were doing to their victims; entirely by chance I stumbled on another discovery--what they were doing to the meat-supply of the civilized world. In other words, I aimed at the public’s heart, and by accident hit it in the stomach” (Bloom). With the publication of a single book, Upton Sinclair found himself as a worldwide phenomenon overnight. He received worldwide response to his novel and invitations to lectures all over the world including one to the White House by President Roosevelt. In late 1904, the editor of the Appeal to Reason, a socialist magazine sent Sinclair to Chicago to tell the story of the poor common workingmen and women unfairly enslaved by the vast monopolistic enterprises. He found that he could go anywhere in the stockyards provided that he “[wore] old clothes… and [carried] a workman’s dinner pail”. Sinclair spent seven weeks in Chicago living among and interviewing the Chicago workers; studying conditions in the packing plants. Along with collecting more information for his novel, Sinclair came upon another discovery--the filth of improper sanitation and the processing of spoiled meat. With the publishing of his novel, Sinclair received international response to its graphic descriptions of the packinghouses. The book is said to have decreased America’s meat consumption for decades and President Roosevelt, himself, reportedly threw his breakfast sausages out his window after reading The Jungle. However, Sinclair classified the novel as a failure and blamed himself for the public’s misunderstanding. Sinclair’s main purpose for writing the book was to improve the working conditions for the Chicago stockyard workers. Sinclair found it...
Occupational Safety and Health Administration also known as OSHA is a U.S. regulatory agency that is used to implement the safety of employees, patients and the enviro...
Deborah Fink has described in her book “Cutting into the Meatpacking Line” how fluency in English, along with gender, race, and ethnicity has played a role in the inequality and discrimination inside the meatpacking plant, where she has become a part of for a short period of time. Accordingly, in chapter four, Fink mentioned that “racial division ran throughout the plant” (Fink, p. 113) and that most of the management and supervisors were white except for one distinct higher level employee named “Ricardo”. Furthermore, Fink also described that distinctions amongst workers in the cafeteria was obvious so as discrimination towards minority groups on the floor plant. With that said, the ability of some workers to speak the English language as
Meatpacking has become the most dangerous job in America. Unlike poultry plants, in which almost all tasks are performed by machines, most of the work in a slaughterhouse is done by hand. Hazards of the job include injuries from the various machines and knives, strain to the body from poor working conditions, and even methamphetamine use in order to keep up with the production line. Women face the added threat of sexual harassment. This chapter opens with an anecdote about the largest recall of food in the nation’s history. In 1997 approximately 35 million pounds of ground beef was recalled by Hudson Foods because a strain of E Coli was found in the food. However, by the time the beef was recalled, 25 million pounds had already been eaten. Schlosser notes that the nature of food poisoning is changing. Prior to the rise of large meatpacking plants, people would become ill from bad food in small, localized arenas. Now, because meat is distributed all over the nation, an outbreak of food poisoning in one town may indicate nation-wide epidemic. Every day in the United States, 200, 000 people are sickened by a food borne
OSHA has been criticized on both ends, by industry for being too strict, and by unions for not being strict enough. In the 1980s, OSHA had instituted a policy that would exempt some workplaces from a complete inspection if they had a lower than average injury rate. However, that policy was abandoned when an employee died in a workplace that OSHA had not fully inspected. OSHA has implemented new procedures that have set higher penalties and increased the maximum fine for all types of infractions. OSHA may inspect a workplace at any time.
Management has to comply with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s regulations, or risk getting fined. There are many cases where companies try to cut costs, violate rules made by OSHA, and hide any unsafe conditions or ask their employees to lie about it. Putting employees in danger to make a greater profit goes against their corporate responsibility and makes their company lack integrity. Upper level management should make policies against using unsafe practices and lower level management lying about work conditions. They should also promote that employees report unsafe conditions to management and not penalize employees for “whistle-blowing”. Johnson & Johnson’s credo states, “…working conditions [must be] clean, orderly, and safe” (Code of Business Conduct, 2015). Johnson & Johnson implemented a variety of programs to make sure their employees are safe within the workplace including: machine, electrical, contractor, warehouse, and office safety, hazardous processes, and fall prevention (Workplace Safety, 2013). Johnson & Johnson works to reduce their workplace injuries each year and even gets employees and their families to help come up with new programs to further reduce unsafe situations in the workplace. All this contributes to why Johnson &
This was the first time the idea came up that injured employees should be compensated, no matter who was at fault for the accident. This was the sign of the beginnings of change, but perspectives on health and safety still held employees responsible and accountable for all injuries and incidents. Moreover, at this time in history, the federal government did not view workplace safety as an area where it had jurisdiction. The.
Many people don’t think where this meat came from. All we know is that meat is delectable and we can’t imagine ourselves without it in our diet. Does animal cruelty really exist in factory farming? I do think animals have to go through a long process of extreme pain and conditions. We don’t know if these factory farms follow the code of ethics such as a healthy, safe, comfortable and peaceful life for these animals.