The New Jungle

500,000 men and women work in slaughterhouses and meat processing plants across America and have some of the most dangerous factory jobs.

Some things remain the same since Upton Sinclair wrote ' The Jungle': the work is mostly done by immigrants and refugees; they suffer high rates of injuries and even, sometimes death; and the government lags in oversight.  The government’s fines for worker deaths and injuries are “embarrassingly low,” according to a former OSHA official. The average initial fines leveled on multi-million dollar meatpacking companies are $19,340 per case, which are negotiated down to, on average, $10,993.

“Employees aren’t cattle that go through the chutes,” said the widow of one worker. “They’re people with families.”

Meatpacking workers call it “the chain.” Sometimes “the line,” or “la linea.” It sets the pace for all work done at meat processing plants, production rates that force workers to make in the tens of thousands of cuts, slices and other movements for hours at a time.

Those repetitions affect workers’ muscles, tendons, ligaments, and nerves, causing what is called musculoskeletal disorders, or MSDs, and resulting in sprains, strains, pains, or inflammation. 

The rate of meatpacking workers who lose time or change jobs because they’re injured is 70 percent higher than the average for manufacturing workers overall, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

http://harvestpublicmedia.org/topic/dangerous-jobs-cheap-meat