Last week, OSHA issued noteworthy citations against a poultry slaughtering facility in Delaware. The agency is using its General Duty Clause to hold Allen Harim Foods in Harbeson, Delaware responsible for ergonomic hazards that plague the entire industry—hazards involving the repetitive cutting and twisting motions that lead to musculoskeletal disorders like tendonitis and carpal tunnel syndrome.
This case follows another from October of last year, when, in response to a complaint by workers and their advocates from the Southern Poverty Law Center, OSHA cited Wayne Farms in Jack, Alabama for General Duty Clause violations, also related to ergonomic hazards. As it turns out, the Wayne Farms case was a shot across the bow for an industry that subjects its workers to punishingly repetitive work in a variety of situations. Today’s announcement may be evidence of a trend developing in OSHA enforcement.
It’s a trend that’s encouraging for poultry plant workers and close observers of the industry because these are hazards that have gone on, unabated, for years. The industry lauds itself for declining injury rates, but the rules for recording musculoskeletal injuries are complex and employers know all the tricks for avoiding reporting. In both the Wayne Farms and Allen Harim cases, OSHA found clear evidence of the employers skirting the recordkeeping rules.
A recent NIOSH investigation at another Delmarva poultry processing facility exemplifies the problem of underreporting and the connection to musculoskeletal injuries. There, the employer’s recorded injury rates were dropping precipitously in recent years, to below the national average for the industry. Yet, when NIOSH talked to workers and ran voluntary nerve conduction tests, the agency found that 34 percent of the workers had symptoms that met the case definition for carpal tunnel syndrome and 67 percent had abnormal nerve conduction results (which suggests a high likelihood of carpal tunnel either being present or coming soon).
Employers in this industry run their workers into the ground because there’s no strong standard to combat the hazards of dangerous work speeds. After OSHA issued a major ergonomics rule in 2001, Congress used a little-known procedural move to block the rule. Since then, the agency has failed to try again, even despite a petition from poultry workers’ advocates for a rule tailored to the hazards in the poultry and meatpacking industries.
Without a rule, enforcing protections through the General Duty Clause is the next best option for OSHA. But it’s a limited solution that relies on the deterrent effect of a few strong cases to—hopefully—prompt widespread reform in an industry that has historically treated workers like disposable cogs. Strong cases like this are a first step, but workers need more than a shot across the bow, they need strong standards that apply to every worker in every plant.
Celeste Monforton has a great post about the case here, calling out Allen Harim for doing more to promote animal welfare than human welfare.
Showing 2,819 results
Matt Shudtz | June 22, 2015
Last week, OSHA issued noteworthy citations against a poultry slaughtering facility in Delaware. The agency is using its General Duty Clause to hold Allen Harim Foods in Harbeson, Delaware responsible for ergonomic hazards that plague the entire industry—hazards involving the repetitive cutting and twisting motions that lead to musculoskeletal disorders like tendonitis and carpal tunnel […]
Evan Isaacson | June 22, 2015
Editors’ Note: This is the fourth in a series of posts on measuring progress toward the 2017 interim goal of the Bay TMDL. The first three posts cover the region as a whole, and then Pennsylvania and Virginia. Future posts will explore the progress of the remaining four jurisdictions. […]
Erin Kesler | June 19, 2015
Regular readers of this blog are already well acquainted with her, but for everyone else, CPR is pleased to introduce our new workers’ rights policy analyst, Katie Weatherford. Weatherford joins CPR after several years with the Center for Effective Government, where she was a regulatory policy analyst and advocated for strong regulations to protect public […]
Robert Verchick | June 18, 2015
ROME—On my first visit to Vatican City, before my meeting with Michelangelo, I greeted the Pope via the city’s ubiquitous souvenir stands. I love this stuff. You can try on the “Papa Francisco” kitchen apron and imagine the pontiff’s smile beaming over your Spaghetti Bolognese. Or gently joggle the pate of a Pope Francis bobble-head. […]
Evan Isaacson | June 17, 2015
We recently explored how Virginia’s progress toward meeting the 2017 interim goal for the Chesapeake Bay Total Maximum Daily Load (Bay TMDL) is mostly the product of decades’ old financial commitments. So, we might hope to see much of the same from Pennsylvania, a fellow member of the Chesapeake Bay Commission since 1985. Unfortunately, despite […]
Evan Isaacson | June 17, 2015
This is the second in a series of posts to explore progress in cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay, as reflected in recent data from the Chesapeake Bay Program’s elaborate computer model of the Bay, which accounts for what the states are actually doing to reduce pollution. Read the first post, taking a look at the […]
Erin Kesler | June 16, 2015
This morning CPR Scholar and George Washington University Law School professor Robert Glicksman will testify in support of EPA’s proposed rule to regulate ozone. The Hearing, held by the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommitee on Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade will focus on the potential impacts of the proposed ozone rule on manufacturing. Glicksman’s testimony corrects misinformation about […]
Thomas McGarity | June 15, 2015
In the shadow of the upcoming Supreme Court decisions on Obamacare and same-sex marriage is an important environmental case that has important implications for the health of women of childbearing age in America. The Court will decide whether to uphold the Environmental Protection Agency’s stringent limitations for emissions of the toxic metal mercury from the […]
Richard Pierce, Jr. | June 10, 2015
Editor’s Note: This is the second of two posts. Yesterday’s examined the need for a carbon tax as a way to reduce carbon emissions. Real-time pricing of electricity is a logical complement to a carbon tax. Economists are fond of saying: “First, get the price right.” What they mean is, if we can take the […]