While meatpacking and poultry workers have to deal with crippling work speeds every day that cause high rates of devastating and permanent injuries, they also suffer other abuses and indignities at work which undermine their safety and health.
One of the most common issues that workers consistently point to as a serious safety risk is that employers routinely deny workers access to use the bathroom. These denials come at the great expense of their safety and the sanitary conditions within plants that prepare our food.
Today, Oxfam America released a report – No Relief – in which they and other organizations conducted dozens of interviews with current and former poultry workers. The report documents how the demanding speed of work dictates every facet of work in plants, including how often workers are allowed to use the bathroom.
This focus on production speed at all costs has resulted in disturbing and systemic practices in plants, in which supervisors regularly deny bathroom breaks to workers, create time limits for bathroom use, threaten disciplinary action for taking too long to use the restroom, harass and yell at workers who ask to use the bathroom, and, in one case, charge money for workers who use the bathroom.
In order to deal with these dehumanizing conditions, some workers are forced to wear adult diapers or restrict their intake of food and drink. The exceptional obstacles placed before workers to use the bathroom also produces serious health risks, such as urinary tract infections and kidney damage.