Dying for your pork chops

Meat packing plants have been declared "essential businesses" by Emperor Trump and ordered to stay open. This means that workers in those plants cannot stay home for their own safety. In several meat plants, hundreds have tested positive and dozens have died.

If workers choose to stay home, they are not eligible for unemployment compensation and can be fired without cause. This is in contrast to other employment, where a person can not report to what he considers a dangerous workplace without fear of retaliation.

These workers are disproportionately minorities. They generally have poor access to health care. Many are immigrants--legal and illegal. They have no work-from-home options. And of course, they have no political power.

That's why Trump felt free to fuck them over. In the coming months, think of how many people died to get you that juicy pork chop on your plate. (And yes, though they are immigrants, they are people.)

OK, Kevin.  How would you address these issues if you had the power?  Seriously.  Thanks.

My heart is bleeding - oh please Kevin, please tell me when I can stop my bleeding heart from bleeding...

So...if you're 60 years old with Asthma you have to go into the meatpacking plant where 75% of your coworkers are infected with a disease that puts 60 year olds with asthma in a truly life threatening situation.

Refusing to show up makes that person uneligible for unemployment and workman's comp.  But on the brightside - real estrate developers got a tax rebate for 2020...and 2019...and 2018.    SO there's that.  

I would enforce the existing laws.

If an employer knowingly requires employees to work in unsafe conditions and they are injured or killed, the employer is legally liable for damages, and may also be prosecuted criminally. If the companies are bankrupted, so be it.

If an employee refuses to work, and it can be shown that the existing working conditions were unsafe, then the employee is entitled to unemployment compensation and perhaps other remedies.

Candy, do you have a problem with existing laws?

Really, what the hell do you want the pork producers to do with the hogs that need to go to slaughter? Just kill em’ a let the producers all go broke? Your a fuckin idiot! When you have no meat to eat just go ahead and eat your plant based fake meat! 

Well if they are illegal’s they should not be here to begin with! They have excellent healthcare plans for their employees.

If they are illegal’s they should not be here in the first place! Major packing plants offer excellent Heathcare plans, probably better than you and I have.

This is my primary reason for being against opening the economy.  Our food supply lines are hanging on by a thread right now.  If these workers or their families go out in public more once everything is opened back up, some of them will get COVID-19. It only takes one of them to bring it back to the plant and then two weeks later the whole plant is shut down.  I know in my area we are running dangerously low on beef and it ain't just the local Wendy's that doesn't have beef.

As to the workers, all vulnerable workers in the plants should be sent home with unemployment. Healthy workers should be paid for working an extremely dangerous job for the duration of the pandemic. The government would have to cover this hazard pay. I bet if you paid meatpackers hazard pay that bumped their pay up to 70-100k a year during the pandemic you would have a lot of new people wanting to be meatpackers.

rdwoodpecker, The ones in my area are the bottom of the barrel in terms of pay and benefits.  That is why there are so many illegals, non-English speakers and poorly educated folks working at those places. People can get more pay and better benefits at the local fast-food restaurants.  The days of meatpackers being uninonized employees with good pay and benefits is long gone.

If you get COVID-19 at work in most states it is not covered by Workman's Comp. Plus, Mitch and Trump want to take away their right to sue if their employer sends them to work in dangerous conditions.

They are here because the working conditions are so poor and the pay is so low, no one else will do those jobs.

I note a contradiction in your ideological stance. On the one hand, you say "We's gots to has our pork." On the other had, you want to round up and imprison all the illegal immigrant workers who are critical in getting you your pork chops.

And in answer to your question, yes, we CAN eat other things besides meat! During WWII, the average family was only able to eat meat once a week. Nobody starved.