Americans Love Their Chicken, But the Poultry Industry Needs Reform

Greasy, slippery floors on top of the pressure to work quickly make his plant especially dangerous. “About a month ago, a woman holding a bag of chicken slipped and cut open her forehead and had to have 17 stitches,” he said. “Last Wednesday, a mechanic trying to fix a machine lost a finger. But they are under pressure to work quickly also. When a mechanic comes to fix a machine, often a supervisor and a manager will stand behind him, just watching him to push him to work faster.”

Gonzalez also says he believes line speeds are surreptitiously increased little by little by plant managers. “I feel it has increased about 40 percent since the pandemic began,” he says. “When the supervisors see we have managed to work at a certain speed, they make the line move faster.”

A Walk-Out Changes One Plant’s Conditions

Last December at the George’s Inc plant in Springdale, Arkansas, some 30-40 poultry workers walked out to protest unsafe working conditions and what they said was management’s attempt to conceal Covid-19 outbreaks at the plant. The action was the first of its kind by poultry workers in Arkansas.

Maria, 28, was one of those who helped organize the action, and she says it gave the workers new confidence.

“There was short-term retaliation, in that they followed me everywhere I went, even to the bathroom, to try to intimidate me,” said Maria, who has worked for five years in the poultry industry. “But always before, supervisors told us if we did any action, we would be immediately fired. That didn’t happen. So next time, I think more workers will participate.”

She also noted the workers achieved one of their goals: a return to staggered shifts to prevent overcrowding during Covid-19. But this mother of three children, aged 2, 7 and 8 says more reforms are needed. “I don’t want my kids to ever work at the processing plant,” she says. “They need to have better job opportunities than I do.”

Consumers Have A Role

Magaly Licoli was working at a community clinic in Arkansas in 2013, helping poultry workers try to get medical insurance, when a single mother, about 40 years old, came in. She had been injured in a chemical spill in a Tyson plant two years earlier that sent over 100 workers to the hospital. “I have holes in my lung,” the woman told her, “and no health insurance, and I can’t hold down a job.”

“I began understanding this is a systemic issue,” Licoli said. “Once these workers get injured, they are disposed of.” She threw herself into learning about the workers’ rights movement and joined 16 Latina women poultry plant workers to found Venceremos (“Overcome” in Spanish), one of a handful of organizations in the U.S. focused on poultry worker rights.

Consumers have a very important role to play—the “power of purchase,” Licoli says. “Using their pocketbooks, consumers can help us insist that poultry workers be treated humanely, with respect and dignity.”

This overlaps with The Rockefeller Foundation focus on advancing economic and racial equity in the U.S. by helping organizations use their food dollars in ways that advance the public good and prioritize food that’s grown sustainably and equitably.