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http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/250/meat-packing.html
Meatpacking in the U.S.: Still a "Jungle" Out There?
2000 - Current
Responding to the concerns of labor and public advocates, former Nebraska Governor Michael Johanns (currently U.S. Secretary of Agriculture) issued the "Nebraska Meatpacking Industry Workers Bill of Rights" in June of 2000. Though only a voluntary set of guidelines, the bill recognized the rights of meat packing employees to organize, work in safe conditions, and to seek help from the state.
Animal slaughter, meat packing, and meat processing are difficult, dirty jobs that see a high rate of employee turnover. Key workplace hazards for meat and poultry laborers include excessive processing line speed, work spaces sullied with animal remains, cutting in close quarters, and cumulative stress disorders due to repetitive motions.
In March of 2001, Congress overturned an OSHA approved ergonomics standard with President Bush signing the repeal. The OSHA regulations, approved under the Clinton administration, had been praised by union leaders as an important step toward protecting manual laborers from injuries.
In early 2005, Human Rights Watch released a report entitled "Blood, Sweat, and Fear: Workers' Rights in U.S. Meat and Poultry Plants" which concluded that the working conditions in America's meat packing plants were so bad they violated basic human and worker rights. This was the first time the human rights organization had criticized a single a U.S. industry.
Though pro-industry organizations such as the American Meat Institute (AMI) point out that the number of staff injuries in meat processing facilities have been declining over recent years, meat packing remains one of the most dangerous factory jobs in America. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that there was an average of 12.6 injuries or illnesses per 100 full-time meat packing plant employees in 2005, a number twice as high as the average for all U.S. manufacturing jobs. Some experts maintain that this number is actually too low as many workers' injuries go unreported due to employee misinformation or intimidation.
Losing Ground: U.S. Meat Packing Wages*
*Wages adjusted to 2006 values. Data as of 9/06.
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
Today, America's meat industry is the nation's largest agricultural sector and sales of meat and poultry exceed $100 billion a year in the U.S. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the animal slaughtering and processing industry employed a total of 506,000 people at the close of 2005. The average earnings of production workers that year was $11.47 an hour, about 30 percent less than the average wage for all manufacturing jobs in the U.S. According to REAP, a union-affiliated group, union membership among meat packing employees has plunged from 80 percent in 1980 to less than 50 percent today.
The face of the average meatpacking plant worker has also changed. Over the past two decades, the number of immigrant laborers in meat packing plants—and in the Midwestern areas in which they are primarily located—has increased dramatically. According to the USDA, the percentage of Hispanic meat-processing workers rose from less than 10 percent in 1980 to nearly 30 percent in 2000.
https://www.hrw.org/reports/2005/usa0105/
Blood, Sweat, and Fear
Workers’ Rights in U.S. Meat and Poultry Plants
https://www.bls.gov/iif/
Injuries, Illnesses, and Fatalities
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Total of 5,250 fatal work injuries in 2018, up 2% from 2017
12/17/2019
A total of 5,250 workers died from a work-related injury in the U.S. in 2018, up 2 percent from the 2017 total of 5,147. The fatal injury rate was unchanged in 2018 at 3.5 per 100,000 full-time equivalent workers.
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Employer-reported injury and illness rate unchanged in 2018 at 2.8 cases per 100 workers
11/07/2019
The rate of nonfatal occupational injuries and illnesses among private industry employees was unchanged for the first time since 2012 at 2.8 cases per 100 full-time equivalent workers in 2018. Workers in private industry incurred 2.8 million injuries or illnesses in 2018.
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Schedule
November 4 2020 - Employer-Reported Workplace Injuries and Illnesses (2019 data)
December 16 2020 - Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries (2019 data)
Archived news releases
"IF"?
Not even.
