This struggle is relatively well-documented. In 1906, Upton Sinclair released, “The Jungle” that was meant to uncover the human rights violations of migrant workers, but turned into a benchmark for radical changes, both at the legislative and corporate levels, to meat packing food safety. One hundred years later, in 2005, Human Rights Watch published a report that found that many of the same human rights problems were still happening. Unfortunately, there is no federal legislation that protects the rights of these workers. The U.S. Department of Agriculture does not have much say over worker protection, their jurisdiction mainly lies in food safety and animal welfare. The responsibility falls more onto the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). Outside of recognizing these shortcomings and offering up some unenforced recommendations, OSHA has never sought out any regulatory solutions to address meatpacking’s employment shortcomings. The problem is worsened by the fact that less than 30% of slaughterhouse workers are union members, which is considerably low compared to other manufacturing sectors. This means that, when unions go up Capitol Hill to advocate for worker rights, meatpackers are relatively underrepresented. Although there are some labor unions that were created specifically for processing plant workers, such as the United Packinghouse Workers of America, they have historically focused more on racial discrimination. On the issue of worker safety, I could not find a notable presence from them. This series was mainly meant to focus on the major advancements in animal welfare that processing plants have made, but I think this makes it almost ironic that the animals are looked after, both by the government and by the general public, better than the employees are. I definitely would not be doing a complete Slaughter Process Series without mentioning this problem. A solution will only come when more awareness is brought to the subject and pressure is put on OSHA to do the job they were created for. Read previous posts in this series: Introduction Welfare on the Farm Temple Grandin Transportation Unloading & Holding Stunning
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