May 2, 2020: Trump Sends Meat Packing Workers Back to the Job

 

5/2/20: With the death toll rising it has become cliché to note that more Americans have been killed by coronavirus than died during the Vietnam War. 

By Saturday morning, as numbers climbed, you had to add all soldiers and sailors who died during the Spanish-American War and the American Revolution in order to have an accurate comparison.

 

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Plus 434,234 hours of overtime.

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Since members of the Trump family never don the uniform and always die in comfy beds at advanced ages, it was no surprise to hear a billionaire president order meatpacking plants to stay open during the pandemic and keep producing pork chops and bacon for public consumption. If workers fell ill, Trump didn’t care. Whereas he was alarmed to think stock market investors were falling ill as they watched portfolios shrivel. Besides, he was deeply concerned about not being re-elected. 

Stuck at home, with nothing much to do on a shutdown spring Saturday, I set to work to check into the matter. Like nurses and doctors, and checkout workers at Walmart, men and women who toil cutting up chicken and beef in this country find themselves on the front lines. They have to keep the supply chain open, and they have been infected in shocking numbers. 

For this privilege, slaughterhouse workers and people making sausage earn a mean wage of $13.68 per hour.

 

In Trumpistan, where Senate Majority Leader McConnell is busy filling the federal bench with pro-business judges, I believe this proves we should never raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour. If we did the people who run Tyson Foods, one of the giants in the business ($40 billion in annual sales), might have to cut back on yacht-buying activities. Take Noel White, CEO of the company. In 2019 he took home $8,939,938 in salary and other compensation. That would equal 2,080 hours of work (40 hours per week for 52 weeks) at $13.68, for an annual salary of $28,454… 

…Plus 434,234 hours of overtime. 

John Tyson, the owner of the company, is worth $2.1 billion. Forbes estimates that in one day last week, Mr. Tyson lost $34 million as a result of declines in the stock market. It would take an ordinary worker at one of his plants 1,194 years, nine months, to earn that much. 

It figures that a soulless billionaire like Trump would think nothing of ordering low-paid employees back to work, despite the fact that they often catch and spread the virus on the job. Which means they are prone to topple over dead. Four Tyson employees have already died in Georgia. That includes Annie Grant, 55, who called in sick, but was told to report to work. Two more were dead and 92 infected at a plant in Illinois. Two dead and 148 infected in Iowa. 

Seventy-six sick in Kentucky. 

Eight infected in Maine. 

“Several” infected at a Tyson plant in Wilkesboro, N.C.

 

Ninety at a plant in Tennessee. 

A worker at a Texas plant tested positive for COVID-19, but plant officials decided not to notify co-workers for two weeks. 

Another 125 ill, one dead in Washington. 

And 890 out of 2,200 employees at a plant in Indiana, confirmed positive.

 

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Seafood dinners for state officials. 

NOR SHOULD WE FORGET: Tyson was one of several meatpacking companies sued by the federal government last year. The company was accused of conspiring to keep wages low for what is a predominantly immigrant labor force. According to the suit, officials from several of the biggest corporations held “off the books” meetings at a resort in Destin, Florida and set “artificially depressed” wages for workers. Industry lobbyists paid for hotel rooms and seafood dinners for state officials. 

Those officials then winked at any labor violations they might have found – if they even bothered to look. 

As an added bonus, a raid on poultry processing plants in Mississippi in August 2019 vacuumed up 680 undocumented workers. You could get more Americans to do this type of work. Only you’d have to pay more than the average hourly wage of $12.27 offered in Mississippi. 

Low as that is, it does top Alabama. There, you could develop carpal tunnel syndrome while cutting up chicken – and now, maybe, you could contract a deadly virus – all for $10.90 per hour. 

 

FUN FACT: Former GOP congressman Joe Walsh admits the obvious in a tweet: 

Yep, I’ll admit it: Joe Biden is old.

 

But Donald Trump is deranged. He’s cruel. He’s dishonest. He’s malignantly narcissistic. He’s disloyal to country. He’s cultish. He’s ignorant. He’s authoritarian. He’s corrupt. He’s lawless.

 

I’ll take old over all that bad in a heartbeat.

 

(This blogger might also add: Trump is old. He’s a hater. He’s a liar. He’s as ill-informed as a block of Swiss cheese.)