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IX. Recommendations

To the Administration      

• Adopt new regulations and standards through collaboration among OSHA, USDA and other relevant agencies to reduce line speed in meat and poultry processing plants to levels that do not endanger workers’ health and safety.

• Adopt a strong, clear, enforceable OSHA ergonomics standard requiring equipment engineering improvements, job rotation, more frequent rest breaks, enhanced training in workers’ languages, more accurate, and complete recording and reporting of injuries, and other measures to reverse the tide of musculoskeletal disorders and other injuries in the meat and poultry industry.

• Restore the “OSHA 200” form for reporting workplace injuries and illnesses, or otherwise make reporting requirements and related forms, whatever their name or number, more complete and comprehensive so as to fully demonstrate the amount and causes of workplace musculoskeletal disorders, and implement a rigorous auditing system to ensure full, accurate and timely reporting by employers, with effective penalties for failure to comply.

• Adopt the long-proposed but never implemented Occupational Safety and Health standard calling for employer-paid personal protective equipment for workers required to use such equipment on the job.

• Take more frequent and forceful action to refer fatality cases to the Department of Justice for criminal prosecution where willful violations of OSHA standards cause workers’ deaths.

• Press for federal immigration reforms that reduce the incidence of serious abuse of immigrant workers’ rights, including creating a meaningful process by which undocumented workers can adjust their status and/or reducing the involvement of employers in verifying immigrants’ status, leaving the latter task to federal immigration authorities.

• Raise awareness in both the U.S. Department of Labor and the Immigration and Naturalization Service (current CIS) of their joint November 1998 Memorandum of Understanding that prevents the Labor Department from inquiring into the immigration status of workers during any investigation into labor standards violations, and press for the adoption of similar Memoranda between CIS and other federal agencies responsible for labor standards.

• Educate immigration agency field staff, workers, and employers about their responsibilities and obligations under Citizenship and Immigration Service (CIS) Operating Instruction 287.3A, which requires field agents to refrain from involving CIS in labor disputes by determining whether information about unauthorized employment is being provided to either interfere with the labor, health and safety rights of documented or undocumented employees or to retaliate against employees for seeking to vindicate those rights.

• Through publication in relevant languages, publicity, and training, provide non-citizen workers and their employers detailed information about their right (according to Section 274B of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA)) to protection from: 1) discrimination on the basis of national origin; 2) retaliation in the hiring or firing of authorized non-citizen workers; and 3) a demand from employers for more or different identity documents than those required by law.

• Ensure that the INA is effectively enforced by adequately funding and staffing the Office of Special Counsel for Immigration-Related Unfair Employment Practices (OSC).

To Congress

• Where the Administration fails to act on the foregoing recommendations, enact legislation compelling the accomplishment of those goals.

• Enact the Wrongful Death Accountability Act to strengthen criminal penalties for willful violations of the Occupational Safety and Health Act that cause worker fatalities. Currently, willful violations resulting in death are nothing more than misdemeanors with a maximum sentence of six months.

• Enact minimum federal standards for state workers’ compensation laws to halt a “race to the bottom” among states on workers’ compensation benefits and eligibility rules; and require states to create a rebuttable presumption in workers’ compensation proceedings that meat and poultry industry workers’ claims of musculoskeletal disorder are work-related.

• Enact the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) amending the National Labor Relations Act to provide stronger protection for workers’ freedom of association and stronger remedies for violations. The EFCA provides for the determination of workers’ choice of bargaining representatives by an orderly, non-adversarial process of signing cards to authorize union bargaining instead of the fear-filled and delay-ridden NLRB election process; a neutral arbitration system for first-contract bargaining impasses in newly-organized workplaces; stronger penalties for violations of the Act; and more vigorous use of injunctive remedies to have unfairly dismissed workers reinstated to their jobs quickly, instead of waiting years while employers appeal their cases.

• Enact legislation prohibiting the permanent replacement of workers who exercise the right to strike.

• Enact legislation prohibiting any inquiry into the immigration status of workers and enforce existing provisions against retaliatory referrals to immigration authorities of workers seeking legal recourse or otherwise involved in matters related to complaints, investigations, or claims regarding violations of workplace rights under federal law.

• Adopt immigration reforms that reduce the incidence of serious abuse of immigrant workers’ rights, including by: creating a meaningful process by which undocumented workers can adjust their status and/or reducing the involvement of employers in verifying immigrants’ status, leaving the latter task to federal immigration authorities.

• Enact legislation to specifically provide for temporary visas (similar to the T-visa program for trafficking victims) and cancellation of removal proceedings for immigrant workers whose participation or testimony is essential to the resolution of administrative or federal court proceedings relating to workplace rights.

• Enact legislation to ensure equality of remedies for all workers who suffer workplace violations or seek to enforce workers’ rights, regardless of immigration status. The current proposal in the Safe, Orderly, Legal Visas and Enforcement (SOLVE) Act of 2004, for example, would ensure labor law remedies to immigrant workers unlawfully dismissed for union activity (rectifying the Supreme Court’s decision in the Hoffman Plastic case).

• Through publication in relevant languages, publicity, and training, provide non-citizen workers and their employers detailed information about their right (according to Section 274B of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA)) to protection from: 1) discrimination on the basis of national origin; 2) retaliation in the hiring or firing of authorized non-citizen workers; and 3) a demand from employers for more or different identity documents than those required by law.

• Ensure that the INA is effectively enforced by adequately funding and staffing the Office of Special Counsel for Immigration-Related Unfair Employment Practices (OSC).

To the Administration and Congress

• Fashion a comprehensive new immigration policy to guarantee respect for all human and labor rights of non-citizen workers regardless of their immigration status.

To State Governments

• Ensure that state legislation provides adequate protection for workers’ rights where federal legislation fails to accomplish this, such as measures to adopt an ergonomics standard under state law and to reduce line speed in meat and poultry plants.

• Enact state legislation prohibiting any inquiry into the immigration status or retaliatory referrals to immigration authorities of workers seeking legal recourse or otherwise involved in matters related to complaints, investigations, or claims for violations of workplace rights under state law.

• Replicate the precedent of the 1998 Memorandum of Understanding between the Labor Department and immigration authorities that prevents the Labor Department from inquiring into the immigration status of workers during any investigation into labor standards violations by creating similar memoranda for all state agencies responsible for promoting labor standards and rights.

• Enact legislation that prevents state and local law enforcement agencies from gathering, investigating, or referring information about unauthorized employment to immigration authorities when that information is being provided to interfere with the labor, health, and safety rights of documented or undocumented employees or to retaliate against employees for seeking to vindicate those rights.

• Enact state legislation that makes meat and poultry companies legally responsible for compliance with state labor laws by all labor contractors, temporary labor supply firms, or other entities furnishing workers for meat and poultry labor, and by all subcontractors who work at company facilities, e.g. for cleaning, maintenance, or other on-site work.

• Establish a presumption in state workers’ compensation law that meat and poultry workers’ musculoskeletal disorders are work-related.

• Vigorously enforce state anti-retaliation laws meant to protect workers against dismissal for filing compensation claims for workplace injuries and illnesses.

• Create a “right to seek medical attention” prohibiting employers from denying workers the right to go to a workplace medical clinic or, where there is no such clinic, to seek medical attention for workplace injury or illness without fear of retaliation.

• Adopt regulations on the operations of workplace medical clinics to ensure prompt attention to employees’ injuries and immediate and accurate reporting of injuries to insurers, to workers’ compensation authorities, and to OSHA.

• Abolish state laws authorizing company-employed security forces to exercise police powers and ensure by state regulation that employer security operations may not be used to interfere with workers’ exercise of the right to freedom of association or other rights.

• Within all areas of state jurisdiction and policy competence, adopt and implement policies to protect all human and labor rights of non-citizen workers regardless of their immigration status.

• In addition and complementary to the steps noted above, undertake a review of conditions in meat and poultry plants in the state in consultation with employers, unions, workers, community organizations, immigrants workers’ advocacy groups, researchers, and other interested parties to fashion a comprehensive, cooperative plan for improving protection of meat and poultry workers’ rights.³⁴⁷

To the Meat and Poultry Companies

• Reduce meatpacking and poultry production line speed to rates commensurate with worker safety and prevention of injury, including muscular-skeletal injuries.

• Reconstitute lines and work stations to ensure there is enough space between workers to avoid potential hazards.

• Customize (or make adjustable) work station dimensions, to the extent feasible, to account for workers’ individual physical characteristics.

• Whether or not it is adopted by OSHA or state agencies, implement an ergonomics standard as company policy providing equipment engineering improvements, job rotation, more frequent rest breaks, enhanced training in workers’ languages, more accurate and complete recording and reporting of injuries, and other measures to address musculoskeletal disorders in the industry.

• As company policy, without waiting for legislation, adopt and implement other recommendations to governments noted above.

• Assume responsibility for labor law compliance by subcontractors doing cleaning, maintenance, or other work on company property.

• Halt the use of captive-audience meetings with groups of workers, one-on-one meetings between management and individual workers, or other forms of interference with workers’ exercise of freedom of association.

• Stop the use of permanent replacements against workers who exercise the right to strike.

• Halt the use of company security personnel or deputized police as a force for harassing, threatening, intimidating, or otherwise pressuring workers to shrink from exercising their rights.

• In addition and complementary to the steps noted above, work with relevant industry associations to achieve a comprehensive, industry-wide program for improving working conditions and respecting workers’ rights.