Analysis of Wayne Farm Case Paper Example

Introduction

Over the past decades, the meat and poultry processing industries have reported a tremendous decrease in the number of cases reported about injury and illnesses at the workplace. According to the Bureau of Labour Statistics, firms that process products have reduced the rate of employee injuries and illnesses by close to 62% in the past decade. By employee illnesses and injuries, the BLS also includes musculoskeletal injuries such as carpal tunnel syndrome among other injuries. The Bureau further notes that the reduction in employee injuries and illnesses have reduced from 22.7% in 1994, to just over 4.5% in 2013. The declines indicate a tremendous improvement in the processing plants. Although the decrease in injury rates now stand relatively as low as in other manufacturing industries, the drop in meat and poultry processing industries has been significant. The accuracy of the reports on illnesses by the associations has, however, been questionable since the Occupation Safety and Health Administration cited one of the firms for allegedly misreporting.

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The reports from officials in associations such as the National Turkey Federation and the National Chicken Council have been echoing the significance of their employees' safety, stating that their workers' safety was the most critical concern to them since the workers are their greatest assets. The councils claim full cooperation with the Government Accountability Office. There are claims by the Councils that they have been reporting accurate data concerning employee injuries at the workplace. If the implications by the National Chicken Council and the National Turkey Federation are to go by, then it is expected that the employees working in these plants have experienced a significant change in the way that the plants handle their safety precautions. For instance, the difference could be associated with the plants improving the equipment being used at work, or the working directions should have been adjusted to become more conducive. The claims by these poultry and meatpacking plants should be supported by improvements such as increased task rotation during work shifts for the employees, or implementation of mini-breaks to improve recovery time for employees. Other ways to support the claims of reduced injury rates at the workplace could involve the provision of handled knives that are intended for repetitive duties, provision of hand gears that have handles that are textured to minimize the grip intensisty of employees or to position the knife sharpener to minimize wrist postures that are not neutral. However, the experiences concerning workers operations in the plants have not been changed.

Misreporting Allegations

Along with the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, academic studies and evaluations have realized that workers continue to face the same hazardous conditions cited by the Government Accountability Office over a decade ago. Workers still put their lives on the line to meet the relentless production demands paced by the companies. According to Sarah Rich, a staff attorney at SPLC, staff working in the meat and poultry processing industries are still being sacrificed to meet the demands of the various plants that they work for, thereby commencing an investigation in Wayne Farms in Alabama to ascertain the lack of safety for workers in those companies. CDC reports that employees in the firms that process poultry and meat products still have musculoskeletal ilnesses, distressing injuries from machine operation exposure to chemicals. However, without evidence for their claims, CDC could not ascertain their claims because the processing groups have their statistics that favor their claims of a reduced injury rate within the industry. By participating in stakeholder interviews and allowing for visits within the processing plants, it becomes difficult to convince the public about the wrongs that these plants are claimed to make; the various plants have painted a safe image to the public domain. The Department of Labour claims, however, that data on employee injuries at the workplaces has been challenging to collect since there are underreporting cases. The claims are that the workers opt not to recount specific damages for fear of ending up jobless. Most of the employees working in the poultry plants have been identified as immigrants and therefore, are have generally been paid low wages and exposed to injuries due to repetitive motions. Employers, on the other hand, have been allegedly underreporting the injuries at the workplace over concerns about potential costs. The allegations, therefore, about possible underreporting has been a challenge to ascertain.

Lack of Proper Evidence

For a while, however, proving these allegations of underreporting has been difficult until a complaint was launched by the Southern Poverty Law Centre, about the misreporting on the actual occurrences of injury within the workplaces. The charge specifically mentioned one of Wayne Farms in jack Alabama, where the workers have been operating under harsh conditions. Investigations by OSHA indicate that hazards within the plant have been leading to severe injuries to workers that have not been reported to medical practitioners in the past. Some of the workers came out claiming that they were often forced to see the company's nurse repetitively before they could be allowed to see an independent doctor, meaning that the company nurses often dismissed their claims of injuries as less severe while they actually could have been too dangerous to affect the performance of the employees. The underreporting comes out clearly once the complaint mentions the types of harshness that workers in Wayne Farms in Jack Alabama undergo; the complaint cites conditions such as constant repetitive motions in awkward positions, deficient equipment and fast pace in their work. However, with Wayne Farms claiming that the injuries occur due to risky workers behavior, they not only try to shift the blame to the workers but also acknowledge that there are injury cases that they failed to report.

The Remainder of Injury Reporting

The Department of Labour has only been collecting data for workers whose illnesses and injuries resulted in them taking time away from work, thereby leaving out the details concerning injuries and illnesses that lead workers being transferred to other duties or being placed on work restrictions. Therefore, the DOL did not have complete data on injury and illnesses on sanitation concerning meat and poultry processing workers since the injuries were not entirely categorized under the meat and poultry industries if the employees worked for contractors. The insufficient data by the DOL raised more questions than answers, making it difficult to know whether they did the best that they could at realizing the malpractice concerning injury misreporting.

New Investigation

With the filed complaint from the Southern Poverty Law Centre, however, the injustice towards workers has come out apparently. The charge informs on the harsh working environment in the plant in Jack, Alabama, where the management retaliated against workers who were injured or those who complained about the hazardous conditions. The allegations coming out are that companies under the meat and poultry processing industry have been suppressing workers to avoid reporting on actual injury rates, which are still unfavorably high compared to other manufacturing industries. The complaint by SPLC indicates that workers were often required to forcefully perform repetitive tasks for prolonged periods, under awkward postures. Other evidence discovered by OSHA include gross defects in the lockout procedures for the company, which were supposed to help workers not to get caught in equipment when cleaning them. Wayne Farms, therefore, violated employee safety by misreporting injuries and neglecting to refer injured workers to physicians. As a result, the findings from Wayne Farms revealed the extent to which employees at poultry plants suffer injuries related to work but were never reported. Therefore, the massive reduction in rates of injuries, reported by companies in the meatpacking industry, have been revealed to have been doctored to give artificially low injury rates.

Why Underreport?

Wayne Farms ranks as one of the largest firms that produce poultry in the United States. Therefore, following the workplace safety laws, which states that it is the general duty of an employer to protect their employees from harm, Wayne Farms should be able to ascertain the safety of its workers. Some of the citations by OSHA against Wayne Farms included: lack of rotation during work shifts, less recovery time, provision of knives that are unsuitable for repetitive tasks, use of equipment that did not enhance employee grip force and lack of evaluation of employees at each station. All the citations were on issues that the plant could address to improve the work environment of their workers. However, the plant chose to ignore the need to improve the working conditions of their workers, hence going against their principle of putting their employees' safety first. It is evident that the plant, together with other plants in the meat and poultry processing industry does not value their employees as assets like they claim to be doing. Instead, they plan on exploiting the strengths of their employees for the least commitment that they can make to their safety, with a plan of disposing of them off after they become unfit to work anymore at the plant due to injuries.

The poultry industry attempts to cling to the past reporting that put its injury reporting to an all-time low, claiming that OSHA's allegations against Wayne Farms are unfounded. The industry notices that the accusations on one of its companies would ruin the name of the entire industry, thus leading to it running losses. The reason for a common defensive mechanism is to cover up for the uniform injustice that the industry has been exposing their workers together. If the allegations were not true, then there would be no reason for defense by other companies that have not been cited yet. By actively suppressing the injury reporting by employees from the meat and poultry industry, the industry gained collectively and made a name for itself as an industry that was focussed on its employee safety. However, with citation coming up against one of the companies, especially a large company such as Wayne Farms, it is essential that the whole industry fights back in unison.

Conclusion

With the new investigations, concerning the allegations on underreporting of worker-injury rates by Wayne Farms, it remains clear that the meat and poultry processing industry still conceals most of its injury reports and only choose the injuries that they report. The firms within the poultry industry, apparently conceal such reporting details for popularity gains that would increase its revenues rather than improving their employee safety. However, for workers to be continuously subjected to harsh working conditions but choose to keep quiet about it for fears of losing their jobs, then there must be a lack of employee protection within the meat and poultry processing industry. The conditions could not have been worsened, and injury reports could not have been doctored if the employees were allowed to speak about the unsuitable working conditions within the workplace.

Recommendation

If the employees had protection concerning their work, then they would be able to contribute in the streamlining of the reporting cases by these companies and given the correct statistics required to make assertions on whether the injury rates are declining or not. Also, there would be genuine attempts by the companies to reduce these risks by applying humane working conditions such as appropriate work shifts in the company...