Stop Food Irradiation Project HOME Swift & Co. Packinghouse Workers Charge that Obsession with Speed Endangers Consumers, Workers OCA note: This plant was sold by ConAgra to Swift in September 2002. In July 2002, ConAgra recalled for contamination nearly 19 million pounds of ground beef processed at this plant, from grocery stores. November 26, 2002 MICHAEL RILEY, DENVER POST: When Raul Jimenez comes off an eight-hour shift at Swift & Co.'s Greeley, Colorado slaughterhouse, he often can barely move, exhausted from working on a line that turns live animals into processed meat as fast as six times a minute. That plant, one of the largest slaughterhouses in America, is a marvel of modern food processing. It also creates a pressure-cooker work environment that can pose dangers to both plant employees and the nation's consumers, say workers at the slaughterhouse, which was shut down November 15 after government inspectors found feces-contaminated meat three times in a week. The plant reopened [November 20]. "You're working, and you see there is something wrong with the meat, the only thing you can do is let it pass because another piece is coming right behind it," said Jimenez, who works amid the sweltering heat of the plant's kill floor. Blood-soaked and reeking, that floor works like the opposite of a factory assembly line, according to industry experts. As carcasses speed down the line, workers skin, gut and carve. Each worker performs a single task hundreds, even thousands, of times an hour. Company officials say the line is running slower since the plant's reopening last week, that every employee now has the power to shut down production if contamination is spotted and that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has approved their plan to control fecal contamination. The first two are part of a wide-ranging safety review at the former ConAgra beef plant that began during the summer after the plant recalled 18.6 million pounds of meat for potential contamination with E. coli bacteria, which can be lethal. But several workers said that even with the plant's recent problems, supervisors apply constant pressure to keep the line moving. Workers described a world in which they are driven, sometimes insulted and humiliated, to keep the plant's production up. "From the time you enter, you're told that if the plant stops ten minutes, the company will lose I don't know how many millions of dollars," said Maria Lilia Almaraz, who earns $10.60 an hour cutting bones from cuts of meat with a razor-sharp blade. "It's always 'faster, faster,"' she said. Some workers blame that environment directly for the recent problems, noting that the line was halted for fecal contamination twice the day of the shutdown, before USDA inspectors finally closed the plant. "There is a lot of stuff that goes by because the line is moving too fast," said one worker whose job it is to catch contaminated meat on the line. The woman, a union representative, asked that her name not be used. She said that many key jobs in the plant are constantly understaffed and that training of the largely immigrant workforce is often shoddy. With too few workers on the line, "it's impossible to get it all." Many of the workers' charges are hard to verify independently, but actions taken by Swift in the two weeks after the shutdown bear some out. Line speed at the plant has slowed dramatically. The pace is now being determined hourly, based on the number of workers available, the level of their training and the condition of the animals, company spokesman Jim Herlihy said. One of the most important changes --- giving workers the power to stop production if they spot contamination --- was already in place two days before the shutdown, he said. "The decision was made to make every employee a direct participant in that and give them the ability to stop the line if they see something that needs to be addressed," Herlihy said. And the workers say supervisors have put more contamination cutters on every shift. But problems run deep, workers said, and many are not limited to the Greeley plant. Slaughterhouse work --- which in Greeley pays between $10 and $12 an hour - may be among the toughest in America. Federal accident statistics show that a meatpacking plant is three times more dangerous than the average construction site. That means high employee turnover, plant officials acknowledged. Workers said many employees often stay for only six months or a year, often returning to their home countries or moving on. "It seems we get in 20 new hires a week," said the union representative who asked not to be identified. "A lot of times, (managers) just throw them on the line and say, 'Watch the guy next to you."' Herlihy said the company has an extensive training program, over a specific period of time, for new workers. "We just don't take a new employee, put them on the line and tell them to watch the person next to them." Swift also has a new program to retain workers, including helping newcomers find permanent housing and get acclimated in the community, he said. But workers said managers must do more, including making the job safer. A former farm worker, Miguel Loma said that in 18 months at the plant, he has been injured twice. He broke his thumb last year. And recently he badly twisted his knee. "I was trying to keep up with the line, which was moving fast, and I slipped," Loma said. Workers say repetitive stress injuries, as well as back, shoulder and knee problems, are also common. "The workers aren't stable because they get hurt a lot," said Almaraz. Like other workers, Almaraz said she is afraid that the latest shutdown, on top of the other recent troubles at the plant, may cause it to close permanently. The work is hard, but she doesn't want to lose it. "A lot of people come here for work because it pays ... more than other jobs," said the single mother. "Other jobs pay $6 or $7 an hour. This one pays $10.60," she said. "I don't want to be here. I do it because I need to."