Bloody Work: How Government, Industry Play the Numbers Game on Meatpackers' Safety

By Roger Horowitz, Labor Notes. Posted June 17, 2008.

In one of the most dangerous industries in America, injury rates were cut in half in one year. Is this possible? Only if you bear in mind the saying that "figures can lie and liars can figure."

Meatpacking has always been risky for workers' hands, arms, legs, and backs. A 1943 government study found that killing-floor workers averaged more than two dozen injuries each year and that meatpacking was America's most dangerous industry.

But today the figures make beef and pork processing look far safer than it is. In the 1990s companies began keeping injured workers on the job, which reduced their reported injury rates and their worker's compensation claims.

They were aided in 2002 by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), which changed its recording methods so that the most common injuries in meatpacking are now exiled from official statistics. The result is that today's government data seriously under-report injury levels in the meatpacking industry.

Push-Back on Injuries

For a few decades after the 1930s, when the Midwest's meatpacking plants were organized, unionization made a difference. Less than 10 years after the United Packinghouse Workers secured national contracts, meatpacking's injury rate had plummeted.

As new firms such as IBP took over the industry in the 1980s and union strength declined, working conditions worsened. National union contracts disappeared and pay fell 30 percent. The injury rate increased 40 percent, with occupational illness -- primarily carpal tunnel syndrome -- growing an astonishing 442 percent between 1981 and 1991.

With little bargaining leverage over pay levels, union activists turned to activity around safety issues to retain a foothold in the industry. The immigrant workers who were entering the plants in droves often were unfamiliar with meatpacking and were outraged at the high level of disabling injuries.

In some cases spontaneous walkouts erupted, such as one at a Delaware poultry plant when an immigrant worker lost several fingers.

Public pressure also mounted on the industry. In the late 1980s IBP suffered a public relations disaster. A congressional investigation showed the company had systematically underreported injuries at its Dakota City, Nebraska plant by maintaining two separate injury logs.

The version provided to OSHA contained less than 10 percent of the injuries recorded by the company's own medical staff. The investigation resulted in a $2.59 million fine against IBP for what one official said was "the worst example of underreporting injuries and illnesses ever encountered by OSHA."

For their part, insurance firms that had to pay worker's compensation claims raised their rates for the industry and made it known that they were not pleased with the high level of claims even with the inadequate compensation provided to injured workers.

Rates Drop by Half

These pressures had an impact. The high-water mark of injury rates was in 1991; over the next 10 years aggregate reported injury levels dropped by 50 percent. Some improvements came through ergonomic workstations and new safety equipment.

As important as any real improvements, however, was the employers' decision to keep injured workers on the job -- which lessened workers' comp claims. Until 1981, injuries causing days away from work typically accounted for 45 percent of all injuries and illnesses. But by 2001 injuries causing absence from work fell to just under 10 percent -- a great savings for the insurance industry.

Even with these improvements, meatpacking retained its undesirable position as America's most dangerous industry. In 2001 meatpacking's repetitive motion disorder "incidence rate" was 30 times higher than the average for all private industries.

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Roger Horowitz is a historian with several books on labor and business in the meatpacking industry.