Packinghouses abuse workers' rights, advocacy group says

• Industries Exploiting Immigrants
  

In a blistering report on conditions facing workers in the nation's meat and poultry industries, a human-rights-advocacy group Tuesday said that companies systematically abuse workers' rights as the government fails to uphold them. "It is unnatural that so much danger should be normal in someone's life," said Lance Compa, a Cornell University labor law expert and the author of the 175-page report, speaking at a news conference in Chicago. The report was presented by Human Rights Watch, a group in based in New York that monitors rights around the globe. Though based on interviews with workers and others at a beef-packing plant in Nebraska, a hog-slaughtering facility in North Carolina and a poultry-processing facility in Arkansas, Compa said, the report's findings apply across the board to the 500,000-worker industry. Packinghouse workers, according to the report, regularly suffer life-threatening on-the-job dangers with little training or adequate equipment, are discouraged by companies from reporting their injuries and are pressured not to join unions. A massive influx of immigrants, some in the U.S. illegally, has also created a work force either unaware of its rights because of language difficulties or fretful about speaking out and being deported, Compa added. [more] and [more]

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