To animal rights activists and vegetarians, slaughterhouses are often considered to be the bastions of practices of animal cruelty, which go beyond the slaughtering process. What may not be as well-known is the maltreatment of slaughterhouse workers. In their rampant pursuit of increasing profits, corporations in the meat-packing industry, specifically Tyson Foods and Pilgrim's Pride, have continuously increased slaughterhouse line speeds at the expense of the safety of their workers (Schlosser, Fast Food Nation 169-192; Eat Rights Project "Executive Summary"; Trouble on the Line 16). Their failure to care for these injured workers and their families further testify to these corporations' inhumane treatment of their workers (Schlosser, Fast Food Nation 185). In the remainder of this paper, the abusive treatment of slaughterhouse workers will be examined in greater detail.
Corporations in this industry, which have been increasing their profits, have failed to provide adequate wages or healthcare benefits to their workers. Even as they have placed increasing pressures on workers to increase their efficiency, corporations in the meat packing industry have not compensated them fairly for their work ("Tyson Foods Inc.: CEO Tyson got a bonus of $2.1 million for year" B3). By hiring undocumented workers, Tyson has also deliberately sought to achieve its production objective without paying the workers adequate wages or offering them any forms of benefits. The senior managers know that these workers would not be likely to complain to the authorities about their working conditions (Eating Rights Project "Industry Leaders Industry Disgrace").
According to Schlosser, the rate of injury in a slaughterhouse is approximately triple the rate of an average factory, thus making it the most dangerous job in the United States. Because beef plants have not been mechanized due to the diversity of the shapes and sizes of cattle, workers in...