COVID-19 exploded among workers at Cargill’s High River plant in Alberta during early April, yet the company wanted workers to keep coming in even after almost half of them were infected by COVID-19.
Cargill briefly shut the plant down, but on Monday called workers back.
It was not clear how many turned up, limited to two per car, one in the front, the other in the back seat, or in company-provided school buses.
The union set up an information picket at the entrance saying workers’ lives are more important than company profits.
Alberta Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Deena Hinshaw has said Alberta Health Services officials have done on-site inspections and have been assured the facility is safe.
But the union told members to stay home if they do not feel safe working in the plant.
At Brooks, 444 workers at the JBS plant (formerly XL Packers) have tested positive and the plant has geared down from two shifts to one.
Cargill kept running despite illnesses, offering hourly wage increases and a $500 bonus for longer-term attendance. Those short of money were reluctant to go on temporary layoff without pay.
The results are horrible – 921 infected with COVID-19 out of a workforce of about 2,000.
Cargill and JBS have more cases than the provinces of Saskatchewan, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador combined. Each of the facilities has recorded one COVID-19 death.
In the United States, President Donald Trump has ordered meat-packing plants to remain open. Not so in Canada.
One of the many questions arising now is whether North America’s meat-packing facilities have become too large, meaning that the loss of any one of them is crippling.
R-CALF (Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund) is calling for a better geographic distribution of beef-packing plants and for the breakup of packing-industry ownership.
The union failed to persuade the provincial government to close the Cargill plant which accounts for about 35 per cent of Canada’s beef cattle slaughter capacity.
Union president Thomas Hesse said “it's ridiculous that hundreds of workers can be required to pour into the plant to kill 4,000 to 5,000 cattle a day, while if you climb on the monkey bars in your local park you're going to get a ticket."
On its website, the union told its members: "If you are healthy and have been called and cleared to return to work, you should report to your supervisor. If you don't really think it is safe to work, then don't."
