Slaughterhouses and their Workers

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

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rkers have had to pay out of their own pockets in order to receive any type of medical care. Moreover, to ensure that their insurance rates do not increase, supervisors often place injured workers back to work on "light duty" assignments such as cleaning bathrooms to hide the loss of workdays (Eating Rights Project "Slaughterhouses: More than Just Animals Being Slaughtered in There"). Moreover, injured workers also experience tremendous difficulties obtain workers' comp benefits. In 1989, Texas allowed private companies to withdraw from the state workers compensation program and establish their own self-insurance systems. Without external pressure from underwriters, the corporations in the meat industry are able to shirk their responsibilities of paying workers' compensation for slaughterhouse workers who are injured on the job. While obvious claims regarding on-the-job amputations are not disputed, corporations often take advantage of the law to delay paying claims that revolve around cumulative injuries. By forcing workers to undergo numerous hearings and appeals, these corporations seek to encourage workers to accept a reduced sum of money, which is inadequate for covering their medical expenses. Even when they win in

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