United States slaughterhouses, COVID-19 death traps

This video from the USA says about itself:

The Death March, Slavery, Meat Plant Workers & Covid-19

Workers at meat plants throughout the country have been ordered to go back to work that may kill them because of the pandemic and lack of protection. Trump using the Defense Production Act has ordered the plants to re-open without requiring proper health and safety protection for the workers. Joe Enriquez Henry who is LULAC Council 308 president in Des Moines, Iowa talks about the conditions of meat plant workers and how they are being coerced to go back into the plants where they are getting sick and dying.

According to Joe Henry, the use of undocumented and immigrant workers has allowed the companies to brutally exploit these workers who have no human rights on the job.

He also reports on the refusal of hospitals and clinics to test and treat meat plants and the fact that many workers cannot afford to pay thousands of dollars for their medical costs.

He discusses the conditions of their families and the racist discrimination by the state. The Iowa governor Kim Reynolds had met with Trump and Pence and promised to open up the state despite the growing epidemic. She herself is now in quarantine from the virus.

He also reports there have been no OSHA investigations of the conditions in the plants and that the conditions are even worse than in the period when The Jungle by Upton Sinclair was written.

Henry also discusses the role of multi-national corporations Tyson, Smithfield, JBS on how they not only have attacked workers right to organize but have also passed state laws allowing full deregulation and vertical integration which is now threatening growers of beef, pork and other meat products.

This interview was done on 5/11/20 by WorkWeek host Steve Zeltzer.