Tag: Tyson Foods

Poetic Justice! Big Meat Sued for Discrimination Against Black and Brown Employees

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been telling you for a dozen years that the meatpacking industry is changing America one meatpacking town at a time.

Because they work for lower wages, Hispanics, Asians and African Refugees make up a large swath of the workforce at big plants owned by the likes of JBS and Tyson Foods.

But, all that may change as the global companies find the joys of automation in light of the Chinese virus crisis as I reported here recently.  See also Neil Munro writing at Breitbart.

As long as they were getting a steady supply of new cheap immigrant labor the meat giants were not moving quickly to a robotic workforce.

And, long time readers know that federal resettlement contractors and the US State Department have been in cahoots for decades to supply them with refugee laborers.

Now comes another good reason for BIG MEAT to dump all this cheap ‘diverse’ labor.

 

From the Times-Republican:

Racial discrimination lawsuit filed against JBS

 

An organization named Forward Latino and other groups from across the country filed a lawsuit on Wednesday against JBS and Tyson alleging racial discrimination during the COVID-19 response.

The organizations filed an administrative civil rights complaint with the U.S. Department of Agriculture alleging that the Tyson and JBS adopted policies that rejected critical Centers for Disease Control guidance, including social distancing on meat processing lines, to stop the spread of COVID-19 at their processing facilities, according to a news release from Forward Latino.

The lawsuit was filed by the Food Chain Workers Alliance, the Rural Community Workers Alliance, the HEAL Food Alliance, Forward Latino, American Friends Service Committee — Iowa, and the Idaho Organization of Resource Councils. They are represented by Public Justice, Nichols Kaster PLLP, and Towards Justice.

The lawsuit is seeking the termination of financial assistance from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to Tyson and JBS and for the U.S. Department of Justice to enforce compliance.

If you are wondering exactly how the Black and Brown workers are not treated the same, here is an explanation:

Joe Henry, Forward Latino National Vice President, has been involved with workers rights at meat packing plants during the pandemic.

“Tyson and JBS aren’t even trying to follow CDC guidance by distancing workers on the line or slowing line speed. They’re just trying to make as much profit as quickly as they can with their predominantly black and brown workforce in the factory,” Henry said.

“That’s not the case for their white collar divisions which are made up of more white or Caucasian people — they are allowed to work from home for their health and safety during this pandemic. Because these companies have received over $150 million just this year in taxpayer money, the USDA must investigate this injustice and act immediately to prevent any further worker illnesses and deaths.”

I have literally dozens of posts on the meatpacking industry and how it has been changing America by changing the people. See my tag for meatpackers.

Just as I was writing this post, I see news that another Tyson worker, this time in TN, has died from the Chinese virus.

Endnote:  A reminder (again!) that you should be finding a local source of meat and poultry as a part of your family’s preparations for whatever might be headed our way this fall (and into the future).

 

Tyson Foods Turns to Robots; So We Can Now Stop the Importation of Refugee Labor, Right?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Here is the headline at the Wall Street Journal yesterday:

Tyson Turns to Robot Butchers, Spurred by Coronavirus Outbreaks

One of the huge changes coming to America thanks to the Chinese virus is, I predict, a much more rapid pace of automating many factory jobs.

In 2013 then Senator Jeff Sessions named the players and the industries pushing for amnesty for illegal aliens. I was delighted to see him name the MEATPACKERS. https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2013/06/27/senator-jeff-sessions-the-man-of-the-hour-as-senate-votes-68-32-for-amnesty/

If you are a longtime reader of RRW you know that the meatpacking industry is one of the major forces driving the US Refugee Admissions Program.  The low skill refugee workers are legal and desperate for work, but all that could come to a screeching halt as I said here last month and in May here  as the meat industry and food processing companies generally are forced to use machines that don’t get sick or quit!

Here are the first two paragraphs of the WSJ article (I don’t subscribe, so I can’t see it all), but you get the drift.

SPRINGDALE, Ark.––Deboning livestock and slicing up chickens has long been hands-on labor. Low-paid workers using knives and saws work on carcasses moving steadily down production lines. It is labor-intensive and dangerous work.

Those factory floors have been especially conducive to spreading coronavirus. In April and May, more than 17,300 meat and poultry processing workers in 29 states were infected and 91 died, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Plant shutdowns reduced U.S. beef and pork production…

Since I said in my post at ‘Frauds and Crooks‘ yesterday that it is time to prepare for the worst, stop buying meat from any of the big globalist companies that are behind the importation of more impoverished people (like the Congolese from Africa) who will be voting for Democrats, or worse marching with BLM!

And, think about it, what are we going to do with hundreds of thousands of low-skilled and largely uneducated needy people that BIG MEAT is going to drop on the labor market?

See my extensive archive on Tyson Foods and how it has been changing America one meatpacking town at a time (and working hand in glove with refugee contractors to do it!).

Be prepared!

If you like to eat beef, pork and poultry, find a local source NOW and get stocked up!

Meatpackers and COVID-19: Will the Supply of Meat Take a Hit as Workers Get Sick?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ 1 Comment

That is the gist of this story from ProPublica (a Leftwing publication), which reports on how the virus is creeping into slaughterhouses across the country.

However, meat industry reps are optimistic that the virus will not slow meat production and that the virus won’t end up in the food supply.

Longtime readers know that Big Meat has been changing America one town at a time as it relies heavily on immigrant and refugee labor and as such has been a favorite topic of mine here at RRW since 2008 when I first learned that Bill Clinton was helping supply his meatpacking buddies with refugee labor from Bosnia.

What Happens If Workers Cutting Up the Nation’s Meat Get Sick?

As meatpackers rush to meet demand, their employees are starting to get COVID-19. But some workers say they’re going to work ill because they don’t have paid sick days and can be penalized for staying home.

Here’s what has happened in the meatpacking industry in the last week alone:

A federal food safety inspector in New York City, who oversaw meat processing plants, died from the illness caused by the novel coronavirus.

A poultry worker in Mississippi, employed by America’s third largest chicken company, tested positive for the virus, causing a half-dozen workers to self-quarantine. Another worker in South Dakota, employed by the world’s largest pork producer, also tested positive.

In Georgia, dozens of workers walked out of a Perdue Farms chicken plant, demanding that the company do more to protect them.

Can they keep up with the demand? “Grocery meat sales, excluding deli meat, surged a staggering 77% for the week ending March 15.”

And Tyson Foods told ProPublica on Friday that “a limited number of team members” had tested positive for the disease.

As COVID-19 makes its way across the country, leading to panic grocery buying in state after state, the stresses on the nation’s food supply chain have ratcheted ever higher. But in industries like meatpacking, which rely on often grueling shoulder-to-shoulder work, so have the risks to workers’ health.

In interviews this week, meat and poultry workers, some in the country without authorization, noted with irony that they have recently been labeled “essential” by an administration now facing down a pandemic. Yet the rules of their workplaces — and the need to keep food moving — pressure them to work in close quarters, even when sick.

[….]

Many of the nation’s meatpackers declined to respond to specific questions about how they’ve dealt with infected workers or what they’ve done to try to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 in their plants. Or they offered vague assurances that workers are being protected.

So far, only two meatpacking companies — Tyson Foods and Cargill — have announced companywide temperature checks to screen employees for signs of the virus. Two more say they have begun rolling them out.

But except for unionized plants, meat and poultry workers rarely get paid when they’re sick. At many companies, including Tyson, workers receive disciplinary points for calling in sick. Because points lead to termination, workers told ProPublica, they and some of their colleagues have continued to work even when sick, despite the coronavirus.

[….]

Even before the coronavirus, the meat industry had complained of a labor shortage as low pay and harsh conditions collided with a tight labor market, tighter borders and dramatic reductions by the Trump administration in the number of refugees, who make up the backbone of many plants’ workforce.

[….]

“Our primary focus is to keep our plants running so that we can feed America,” Tyson’s president, Dean Banks, said on CNN. “We’re running the plants as hard as we can.”

And some analysts note that even if an outbreak of the virus forced a plant to close, the industry — with more than 500,000 employees at 4,000 slaughterhouses and processing plants across the country — is big enough to absorb the loss.

There is much more, it is a long article, continue here.

In the summer of 2016 I traveled around the midwest and west to have a look at meatpacking towns and how the cheap labor demands of Big Meat were changing America.

My conclusion:

If you can’t live without meat, my recommendation is to find a local producer so you know just where and how your food has been processed.

Note that I have a tag for COVID-19 posts here at RRW.

You might be interested in my previous post about Bowling Green, Kentucky and its newly unemployed refugees.

 

Suck-up Letters from Republican Governors Causing me to Start Swearing

~ Ann Corcoran ~ 2 Comments

And, if governors like Arkansas’s Asa Hutchinson are an example, their Leftwing Refugee contractors aren’t even very appreciative of the caving that one Republican governor after the other is doing—-I suspect at the behest of Secretary of State Pompeo who is (I believe) attempting to undermine his nemesis in the White House Stephen Miller (more on that later).

Hutchinson abandons the President on refugee program! Caves to the Religious Left! (Or was it to Tyson Foods?). He could have kept his letter simple, but oh no, he had to demonstrate his ignorance and suck-up to the ‘religious’ Leftwingers in his state.

As the Republicans are lining up to oppose the President (yes, that is what they are doing!), I said I wasn’t going to write about each capitulation, but a few might be worth it to demonstrate the governors’ ignorance of the refugee program that Trump wants to seriously bring under control.

This just in: 15 Republican Governors have turned against the President so far!  See if yours is one of them!

 

Check out Hutchinson’s ‘kiss-ass’ comments at Arkansas Online:

At least he could have been honest and mentioned that he has to keep Tyson Foods happy (See Lutherans in Arkansas get a $50,000 grant from Tyson Foods!) just like ol’Bill Clinton did when he supplied Big Meat with refugee labor.

Refugee order appreciated, state advocates say

FAYETTEVILLE — A leader with Canopy Northwest Arkansas on Tuesday welcomed Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s executive order that Arkansas will continue to accept legally immigrating refugee families.

Faint praise for the governor who capitulated:

“I don’t want to make it more than it is, which is that we will continue to do what we are doing, but we appreciate the governor’s support,” said Clint Schnekloth, chairman of the board of Canopy, a refugee assistance nonprofit group.

Clint Schnekloth

An executive order from President Donald Trump allows states to refuse further refugees. The U.S. Department of State coordinates refugee relocation with nine charitable organizations [federal contractors—ed]*** through agreements [aka federal contracts—ed] with the government.

The Northwest Arkansas group worked with two of those nine groups — Catholic Charities Immigration Services and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service — to get the region accepted in 2016 as a refugee resettlement site. [This was the period at the end of the Obama Administration when his State Department was rapidly expanding resettlement sites—ed].

“Previously, there was no coordination with the state and little awareness,” Hutchinson said in a statement Tuesday. “Under the new executive order, the state will have more visibility. The approval will need to be each year, and the state will be able to assure the refugees are assimilating into the community and have access to jobs, education and job training. I have confidence that local communities will provide the support necessary, but we will be able to monitor.”

WTH the state will be able to assure the refugees are assimilating. Really? Monitor how? And, if you, governor, somehow figure out that they are not assimilating will you have the backbone to say NO next year?

States have until Jan. 21 to declare whether they will allow placement of refugee families through the federal admissions program under the executive order. More than 30 governors have agreed to accept refugees, according to The Associated Press.  [Only a tiny fraction of the consent letters have been received by the State Department as of this writing.  What! bureaucrats on vacation?—ed]

[….]

Schnekloth said the Canopy group appreciates the degree of support and clarity in Hutchinson’s decision to beat the deadline by a month and to reiterate the importance of helping legal refugees. The governor announced his decision Monday in a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Dumb Asa didn’t have to send any consent for at least another month and the squishy language of the funding guidance allows even more foot-dragging by governors beyond January 21, 2020.

The Contractors wanted quick consents so they can prepare their requests for YOUR money by January 21st.

“While we fully support control of our borders and oppose illegal immigration, we also value the contribution of immigrants and understand the importance of America continuing to be a welcoming nation for those truly seeking refuge and following the legal path to our land,” reads Hutchinson’s letter to the secretary. [Contractor boiler-plate language!—ed]

“To that end, I have received confirmation from local municipalities, members of the faith-based community, as well as members of the nonprofit community, confirming they will coordinate support and facilitate employment opportunities for refugees that are approved for relocation to Arkansas,” the letter says. [More contractor boiler-plate language—ed]  

How does Hutchinson plan to monitor the “faith-based community” to make sure they will support and find jobs for refugees?

And, in reference to his earlier opposition to the Obama plan for a mass movement of Syrians to America, he says this:

The family-by-family relocation by the admissions program is not the same, and recent efforts by the administration “enhancing security checks to ensure proper screenings are carried out” in the program are appreciated, the governor’s letter says.

It is the same program Obama used! 

There is nothing new because the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program HAS NOT BEEN REFORMED.  And, in this, one small effort by Trump to rein-in the dysfunctional program, we have spineless governors kissing-up to ungrateful (anti-Trump) Lefties.

 

***For new readers these (below) are the nine federally-funded refugee contractors that operate as a huge conveyor belt monopolizing all refugee placement in America.  For decades they have decided in secrecy where to place refugees and they don’t want to lose that power because even as they pontificate about their religious convictions and humanitarian zeal, they are Leftwing political activist groups working to change America by changing the people and using your money to do it!

And, they do not limit their advocacy toward only legal immigration programs, but are heavily involved in supporting the lawlessness at our borders.

The question isn’t as much about refugees per se, but about who is running federal immigration policy now and into the future?  

(I plan to say this once a day from now on!)

I continue to argue that these nine contractors are the heart of America’s Open Borders movement and thus there can never be long-lasting reform of US immigration policy when these nine un-elected phony non-profits are paid by the taxpayers to work as community organizers pushing an open borders agenda.

Tyson Foods bringing "ethnic empowerment network" to a town near you

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This story from Garden City, Kansas makes me wonder—-who is deciding the future for your meatpacking town, the citizens, or Tyson Foods?

tyson-foods-garden-city
Tyson Foods in Garden City, Kansas

I have a pretty large archive on Garden City which is one more heartland city that has been changed by the arrival of US State Department-planted third world refugee workers over the last decade or so.

The story leads me to believe that everything is not peace and love when diversity comes to town….

….and that Tyson Foods has a huge stake in keeping the immigrant worker supply train on the tracks!

Continue reading “Tyson Foods bringing "ethnic empowerment network" to a town near you” →