JBS Worthington plant workers demand safer work conditions
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Hundreds of meatpacking workers marched in shifts outside of the JBS Foods plant in Worthington throughout Thursday afternoon and into the early evening. They carried signs and demanded safer work conditions at the pork plant.
“This march that we had today, this was the first march outside of the JBS plant in over a decade,” said Ruth Schultz, meatpacking director of the Local UFCW 663. “It was the most workers who have come together to take action about workplace issues with their union in a decade, and so we are hopeful that all the workers and JBS see that this is an issue that many workers care deeply about.”
More than 1,000 hogs an hour are sliced into different cuts of meat on production lines at JBS. The UFCW, which represents the Worthington JBS employees, wants to include line speeds in contract talks. They’re also pushing for additional training and other safety measures, as well as higher wages for what they say is already dangerous work.
Their demands come as the Trump administration is moving forward with plans to allow pork and poultry processing plants to speed up production.
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Last month, the U.S. Department of Agriculture extended waivers for increased speeds while also moving to make the increases permanent. The federal agency also said it would stop requiring plants to submit worker safety data, though it still requires companies to report injuries to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
Workers at Minnesota meat processing plants say current line speeds already cause repetitive stress injuries, which are conditions that are caused from the same body movements that are repeated over a period of time to joints, ligaments and nerves. They worry faster line speeds will cause more injuries and affect food safety.
Diana Rodriguez has been working the ham line at JBS for two years. She experienced pain in her hands and muscles. Rodriguez said through a translator how this was common among her fellow workers.
“If you saw us on our breaks, you’d see us massaging our hands, exercising our wrists trying to make that pain go away and make our hand feel better for when we have to go back,” Rodriguez said through a translator. “With these repetitive motion injuries, I felt the pain in my hand. But I felt it travel up my arm, and I felt it all the way into my back.”
In a statement, JBS said the company is actively trying to negotiate but claims the workers’ union is refusing to come to the bargaining table. JBS also says it has requested specific information about safety concerns but says the union has only provided vague responses.
Lori Stevermer of the National Pork Producers Council said before allowing for increased line speeds, the USDA studied meat plant safety and found no direct link between worker injuries and faster line speeds.
“They did come to the conclusion that the line speeds were not a leading factor in worker injury,” she said. “So why is that important to us as a pork industry? If these line speeds were to slow down, that would reduce the capacity in our industry.”
But the study did show that a higher “piece rate” did correlate with injuries.
Don Stull, professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of Kansas, has studied the meat and poultry industry since 1987. He said meat and poultry processing is one the most dangerous industries in the United States, with injury rates double or more the national average for manufacturing overall.
“That means each worker stands at a particular spot, and she or he does a particular activity hundreds or thousands of times an hour, all day long,” Stull said. “They are engaged in repetitive motion thousands of times every day, and so that generates chronic illnesses like carpal tunnel, carpal tunnel syndrome, trigger finger and other kinds of repetitive motion injuries. There can be acute injuries. People slip and fall. They may be cut by a knife or saw.”
Line speeds have increased significantly over the last few decades, according to Stull. He said in the poultry industry the rate of birds processed per minute was about 90 in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. Now it’s 140 birds a minute.
Stull said the current maximum rate of 1,106 hogs per hour means the pigs are “whizzing by on the line.”
“Some of the line speed is taken up by mechanization, so you have robotics and other mechanization that can assist in increasing line speed,” Stull said. “But still, animals are not widgets, they vary in size and shape from individual to individual, and you need a lot of people, a lot of workers doing the job.”
However, with the USDA under the current Trump administration, Stull said the union’s likely going to have a difficult time negotiating for slower line speeds and safer working conditions—especially in the meatpacking industry that’s overall anti-union.
“The Trump administration is definitely not going to take the position of the workers,” he said. “It will certainly support the packers in any kind of conflict between management, ownership and labor.”