Minnesota lawmakers consider new set of safety rules for meatpacking plants

Meatpacking workers told state lawmakers Tuesday about broken ankles, gruesome lacerations, pinched nerves and other injuries they and their coworkers have suffered on the job in Minnesota’s meat processing plants.

The workers urged lawmakers in House and Senate labor committee hearings to support a bill (HF23/SF207) that includes new safety regulations for large meat and poultry processing plants and creates a worker rights coordinator in the state’s Department of Labor and Industry.

“During my time at Hormel, I’ve seen injuries unfortunately become the norm in the meatpacking plants,” said Dan Lenway, who’s worked at the Austin plant for over 27 years, during the House labor committee hearing.

Lenway, a member of UFCW Local 663, which represents thousands of meatpacking workers in Minnesota, says he’s seen repetitive stress injuries like carpal tunnel, arthritis and tendinitis, as well as life-altering accidents like chemical burns, broken bones and crushed fingers.

He said injuries have happened even when workers report hazards on the job because managers care more about production than safety.

“Any of these injuries could have been and can be avoided,” Lenway said. “Management continues to run too fast, short-staffed — and corporate greed just doesn’t allow management to maintain machinery to protect our people.”

The bill, authored by Rep. Dan Wolgamott, DFL-St. Cloud, would require meat and poultry processing facilities with 50 or more workers to create worker safety committees made up of workers, a professional ergonomist and a physician to identify hazards and develop a plan to reduce ergonomic injuries.

Workers would be allowed to refuse work they reasonably believe is dangerous, and meat processing plants would have to continue paying employees for missed hours until the hazard has been addressed.

Meatpacking facilities would also have to train new workers on how to safely perform tasks, identify early warning signs of musculoskeletal injuries and how to report injuries. Meat processing facilities would have to keep records of all worker visits to medical personnel and maintain records of all ergonomic injuries suffered by workers for five years.

The bill has additional requirements for worker safety should there be another public health emergency like the COVID-19 pandemic, which ripped through meatpacking plants, where workers often stand shoulder-to-shoulder for hours.

The state’s attorney general or workers would be able to sue employers who do not follow the law or maintain safe working conditions.

“The intention is that we have the backs of the workers who are putting food on our tables,” Wolgamott said.

The rules would not apply to delis or grocery stores.

The push for new regulations, which failed to pass a Republican-controlled Senate the past two years, has taken on new urgency since federal labor regulators discovered children as young as 13 years old were employed cleaning dangerous equipment at the JBS USA plant in Worthington and Turkey Valley Farms plant in Marshall.

Rep. Shane Mekeland, R-Clear Lake, asked why state labor regulators at the Minnesota Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) haven’t acted to enforce existing labor laws and questioned if more regulations wouldn’t similarly go unenforced.

“Did the organization that was established to protect you and your coworkers, did they let you down?” Mekeland asked Lenway, the Hormel worker and union steward.

“OSHA let us down,” Lenway said. “I have members calling OSHA now expressing concerns and OSHA basically tells them, ‘You just have to put in a complaint because we’re months out and there’s no way we can come see you.’”

Department of Labor and Industry Commissioner Nicole Blissenbach told the House labor committee her agency has 50 inspectors spread across the entire state. In the last fiscal year, they conducted 50 worker fatality investigations, 1,300 inspections and answered nearly 10,000 email and phone inquiries.

“There definitely is a strain on the amount of staff that we have in our OHSA compliance division,” Blissenbach said. “It’s hard to say how many we would need to address every safety and health hazard that exists in the entire state of Minnesota, but 50 is not enough.”

Asked after the hearing if he would support funding for more OSHA inspectors, Mekeland answered: “If you want more OSHA employees, that’s the bill we should’ve had.”’

Mekeland also argued new regulations are causing consolidation in meat packing because smaller companies can’t handle the administrative burden.

The bill passed the committee with bipartisan support 11-2 and was referred to the House agriculture committee. Mekeland and Rep. Isaac Schultz, R-Elmdale, voted against the bill. The Senate Labor Committee discussed the bill on Tuesday but did not vote on it.

Schultz suggested unions were failing to protect workers from workplace injuries.

“What role does your union play in protecting the workers and is that relationship currently working?” Schultz asked UFCW Local 663 President Rena Wong.

Wong said the union advocates for better working conditions including through legislation at the state Capitol, which would apply to both unionized and non-unionized facilities.