Appearing before the House Oversight and Reform Committee, the president of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) drew comparisons between progressive meat-packing and supermarket stores and those that apparently have less regard for the health and well-being of their workers.
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The UFCW represents meat-packing, grocery, food-processing, healthcare, retail and senior care workers. Two hundred and twenty-five members of the Union have died of COVID-19 with more than 28,000 testing positive for the infection. Anthony Perrone UFCW President, called for job protection, two weeks of paid sick leave and firm enforcement of COVID-19 precautions at all plants under the jurisdiction of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
It is calculated that close to 25,000 employees of meat-packing and poultry-processing plants have tested positive and 86 fatalities have been attributed to the infection. The UFCW was joined in the appearance before the House Committee by representatives of the American Federation of Government Employees, representing FSIS inspectors. The failure of FSIS to provide their inspectorate with appropriate PPE in the early stages of the infection resulted in a number of cases of COVID-19 and two fatalities. AFGE called for greater spacing on lines for inspectors and slower line speeds.
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Testing Plant Employees |
Pre-Covid times |
In evidence presented before the committee Perrone specifically complemented Cargill and Safeway for their proactive approach to COVID-19 protection and compared the efforts of these companies to late responses, lack of transparency and deficiencies demonstrated by Amazon, JBS, Walmart and Kroger. From the perspective of news reports, Tyson Foods and Perdue led the industry in addressing the challenges of COVID-19 by providing workers with protection and releasing the results of testing for the presence of the infection. |