Meatpacking Industry Safety and Immigrant

¶ … Meatpacking industry [...] safety and immigrant workers in the industry and the recommendations of the organization Human Rights Watch. It is no secret that the meatpacking industry is a dangerous industry requiring regulation and scrutiny. Upton Sinclair first brought the industry to light in his arresting novel "The Jungle" way back in 1906. While it is clear the industry is dangerous, what is not so clear is why industry officials continue to deny the safety and human rights issues that face its workers.

The Human Rights Watch organization recently filed a report on the meatpacking industry and its treatment of workers, especially immigrant workers and their safety rights. A reporter for the "Omaha World - Herald," an area surrounded by the meatpacking industry reports, "Human Rights Watch is a privately funded group whose goal is to hold governments accountable if they violate the rights of their people" (Gonzalez 01.B). Human Rights Watch discovered that numerous human rights violations were occurring in at least three meatpacking plants in Nebraska, and many of them were owned by out-of-state companies, implying that safety violation and issues could be occurring at other plants across the nation, as well. The reporter continues, "The authors described what they called 'systematic human rights violations embedded' in the fast-paced, high-volume meat and poultry industries" (Gonzalez 01.B). Unfortunately, these violations are startlingly similar to many of the conditions described in Upton Sinclair's early 20th century novel, "The Jungle," which describes workplace violations in the meatpacking industry in stark and vivid terms.

In one instance, the lead character jumps out of the way of a lunging steer that was not stunned correctly in the slaughterhouse. Sinclair writes, "They sent for the company doctor, and he examined the foot and told Jurgis to go home to bed, adding that he had probably laid himself up for months by his folly. The injury was not one that Durham and Company could be held responsible for, and so that was all there was to it, so far as the doctor was concerned" (Sinclair 136-137). Of course, this is a work of fiction, but Sinclair based the novel on his own experiences of living with some of the meatpacking workers in Chicago for almost a year, and most of the incidents in the novel are based on incidents he witnessed. Sadly, it seems the industry has not made as many strides as it would like to think. Reporter Gonzalez notes the Human Rights Watch report notes, "They cited unsafe working conditions, denial of workers' compensation to those injured on the job, intimidation of those seeking to organize unions and exploitation of immigration status to ward off complaints" (Gonzalez 01.B). Again, this relates directly to the conditions reported in "The Jungle." Sinclair writes of the often bitter fight between the packers and the workers to form unions, and how the packers thought nothing of throwing their workers out on the street if they attempted to form a union.

He writes, "[H]e [Jurgis] saw a superintendent come out and walk down the line, and pick out man after man that pleased him; and one after another came, and there were some men up near the head of the line who were never picked -- they being the union stewards and delegates" (Sinclair 325). It is interesting to note that most of the workers in the Chicago stockyards in 1906 were immigrants, just as today, and they had their rights trampled in much the same way many of the plants are accused of violating rights even today. Thus, the safety and human rights issues may have improved, but certainly not as much as one would think they would have. I believe many of the corporations are still mired in greed and corruption just as they were at the turn of the 20th century, and they will never change unless they are forced to change by the people and stricter laws. It is clear that reports and sanctions do not make a difference; they simply dispute them and continue to subjugate and mistreat their workers. They may think they have advanced from the time of Sinclair's powerful novel, but indeed they have not, which is a sad testament and legacy to the industry and its leading corporations.