Wage-theft Free: A Human-Rights-Centric Labeling Proposal

In the last few years, there have been lots of changes in the dairy and meat sections of my local grocery store. Now, I have the choice of buying “cage free” eggs, "cruelty-free" eggs, “free range” chickens, and “pastured" chicken. These new labels and products reflect the public’s growing concern and alarm over the deplorable living conditions of chickens in factory farms, the tiny wire cages, the lack of sunlight, the overuse of antibiotics, and even the debeaking of chickens as a way to prevent injuries from aggressive behavior.

After spending my lunch hour on Monday listening to Rachel Townsend of Northwest Arkansas Workers’ Justice Center (NWAWJC) talk about the working conditions inside poultry factories in northwest Arkansas, I’m starting to think that we need some more labels for these products. We need labels such as “wage-theft free,” “abuse-free workplace,” and “safe working conditions.”

The northwest corner of Arkansas is home to Tyson Foods, which is the largest processor and marketer of chicken, beef, and pork; the second-largest food-production company in the Fortune 500; and a member of the S&P 500. According to USA Today, Richard Bond, the Tyson Foods CEO, made $24.6 million in 2007. By contrast, the average Latina full-time poultry worker earns just $17,700 per year.

Townsend told us that after a worker was killed on the job at a construction site, the workers were given an ultimatum: sign a workers’ compensation-claim waiver or you don't get your paycheck. We heard about one man who refused to sign the waiver for three weeks, until he was told that he would be fired unless he signed. With three children at home to feed, he reluctantly signed the waiver. But only weeks later, while working on a faulty scaffolding rig in the plant, he fell and was paralyzed. Predictably, the company refused to compensate him for his on-the-job injury.

One in five workers in the poultry-processing industry is injured on the job. And because many are undocumented workers, they are hesitant to report abuses to authorities. They fear facing criminal charges on immigration violations and deportation. These threats are part of what fuels abuses in U.S. meat and poultry plants.

For three years now, UUSC’s Economic Justice Program has worked closely with NWAWJC, providing not just financial grants, but also strategic thinking and networking opportunities to help them expand their work. Townsend is also here in Massachusetts meeting with regional worker centers with organizing and movement building focuses to share best practices and develop ways to achieve safe working conditions.

In the meantime, I advocate a new human-rights-centric labeling system for meat and poultry products so that I can know as much about the degrading working conditions inside poultry-processing plants as I do about the living conditions facing factory-farmed chickens.