Headlines: Minnesota Star Tribune, WATT Poultry
Brooks Johnson reports in the Star Tribune:
The line speeds, the rate at which animals are slaughtered and processed, have long been a point of contention for slaughterhouse employees and their unions.
Faster speeds cut costs, but unions and other worker advocates are worried they would result in more worker injuries.
Roy Graber reports in WATT Poultry how Brooke Rollins parties like it's 1905:
One organization, however, expressed concerns over the action’s implications on worker safety.
“Increased line speeds will hurt workers – it’s not a maybe, it’s a definite – and increased production speeds will jeopardize the health and safety of every American that eats chicken. … We rely on the thousands of workers to safely produce the food on our tables every single day, they can’t do that safely at these speeds – we learned that lesson the hard way just five short years ago – let’s not irreparably injure workers to learn what we already know,” said Stuart Appelbaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU), which represents over 15,000 poultry workers at facilities across the southern United States, as well as meatpacking and processing workers in other parts of the country.
“Worker safety must be a priority, and these facilities cannot operate at these speeds without increased staffing, which cannot happen the way they are constructed now. Issuing waivers to a multi-billion dollar industry with no oversight to ensure it’s done safely and properly is a recipe for disaster,” Appelbaum added. [emphasis added]
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