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| The cruelest cuts Kerry Hall, You love Alexander and Franco Ordo'6nez The Charlotte Observer
In one it trains where the danger abounds, the House company of Raeford Farms appears like a safe place to work. The registry of the company suggests few workers have been hurt annually when killing, cutting, and to empacar million turkeys and chickens. But an investigation done by The Charlotte Observer shows as the bird-raising giant of Carolina of the North has concealed the reach of the wounds, behind the walls of its factories. The company has maintained deceptive records on accidents and has defied to the regulators to satisfy the increasing appetite by the favorite meat with the Americans. And the employees say that the company has ignored, intimidated or dismissed injured workers to the work. The managers of House of Raeford say that they follow the law and they strive to protect the workers. But the registries of the company and the government and the interviews with more than 200 workers (present and ex- employees) indicate that: • The plant of House of Raeford in West Columbia, Carolina of the South, that has 800 workers, did not report musculo-skeletal accidents (MSDs by its abbreviations in English) in a period greater to four years. Experts say that is inconceivable. The MSDs, like the syndrome of carpiano tunnel, is the form most common of diseases related to the work in the bird-raising industry. • The plant of Greenville, Carolina of the South, boasts of to have spent five years without accidents that have made them waste time. But the plant maintains east record bringing to workers of return to the work hours after a surgery. • The company has infringed the law, when not registering accidents in the book of the government for the safety control, indicated an official outstanding of the Administration of Security and Occupational Health (OSHA by its abbreviations in English). • In four of the greatest plants of the company, ordered of first aid and supervisors they have refused the request of some workers to obtain well-taken care of doctor, even though complained intense pain. The companies have financial incentives by hide-and-seek injuries. To ignore lowers them to the costs associated with the compensation to workers by medical cares and fallen wages. In addition, the government awards to companies that report losses rates of injuries when inspecting them with smaller frequency. The regulators rarely check if the companies are reporting with exactitude.
The statistics of the government show a diminution in the injuries between workers of the bird-raising industry during the last decade. The critics say that those numbers are deceptive. These indicate a measurement of the government whom it indicates, that the workers in stores of toys are more prone to develop musculo-skeletal disorders, that the workers of the bird-raising industry. Experts say that is incredible since the bird-raising workers do more than 20,000 movements to cut during each turn, and the worker generally finishes with damage in the nerve and the muscle. House of Raeford and other bird-raising companies depend strongly on the hands of the workers, every day to turn thousands of birds into advisable portions for restaurants, stores and cafeterias. The companies depend more and more on Latin immigrants, who are often obstinate to complain from fear of being dismissed or deportees. House of Raeford says that it watches the security of the workers and it deals who them with respect. “We come to work with five fingers in the hands and in the feet”, Lewis said to the director of occupational security Bill. “And we go away to house with just like we came”. The newspaper asked to one of the experts in recordkeeping of the federal government, who reviewed books of safety control, and what the injured workers said to him to the Observer. Bob Whitmore, that has directed the national system of recordkeeping of workers injured and ill for the Department of the Work of the United States from 1988, said that it considers that its agency has failed in protecting the workers of the bird-raising industry. Whitmore was not authorized to speak by the government, but it said that it feels forced to speak in the name of the workers. After reviewing the findings of the Observer, it said: “This is a violation of the laws of human decency”. The growth has a cost It has climbed to be a company of birds that operated in the back patio to being one of 10 greater in bird-raising production in the country. This helped Carolina of the North to transform itself into the second been greater in turkey production. The company expanded the consumption of turkey beyond the holidays, when creating new products, including breast style “Delhi” and the alites “dinosaur”. It has grown by means of the acquisition of competitors and when selling parts of chicken abroad. Its growth has had a human cost. Their workers have been mutilated by machines and poisoned by toxic chemicals. Two died in accidents that the managers could have come up. Many suffer of days of work exhausting and repetitive that can leave their hands ruined, with pain or mutilated fingers. The company, cradle in Raeford, the east of Carolina of the North, has been mentioned by 130 serious violations of security in the site of work from the 2000, one of highest given to a bird-raising company in the United States. In the communities around the plants of House of Raeford, the pain the bird-raising work can be found in old woman movable houses and houses of rent worn away by the time, where the curtains cover the windows in search of privacy. Rubber boots around the knee splashed with chicken fat, rest in the stairs. In Raeford, to 100 miles to the east of Charlotte, the ex- worker of plant Claudette Outerbridge could remain laid down whole nights wide-awake due to the trembling pain in her right hand. The pain, says she, is been from its work, which included to cut thousands of gizzards daily.
For more than five years in the plant, Outerbridge had a great variety of positions including extracting guts and details every day. She said that she changed themselves from New York, where she worked like receptionist of the Department of Police, and took a work in the plant in 1998. She began to visit the station of first aid almost daily, around the 2002 to bear the pain, according to indicated. An aid of first aid, said she, she gave a cream him but she did not realize any examination to him and she refused his request to allow to see him a doctor. “They said, ah you do not have anything”, said Outerbridge. “They made you feel because was bothering I them when going with the nurse, and who assumes that I had to hold the pain”. In the 2003, it by itself went to see a doctor, who diagnosed a severe syndrome to him of the carpiano tunnel and later he did a surgery to him. It the following year reached an agreement with the company in a case of labor compensation by a sum of money nonrevealed. “She only wanted justice”, said. “She only wanted that somebody became position of my hand”. House of Raeford said that it cannot comment the case of Outerbridge because the agreement is confidential. The director of human resources, Gene Shelnutt, said that the controlled company of deprived way, considers to its workers like part of its family. The company mentioned: “It would never allow that somebody mistreats to somebody of the family. … I believe that we have proveído the hoped one taken care of our employees”. But as much present workers as ex- workers of the department of human resources in two of the plants of House of Raeford, say that the company finds reasons to dismiss injured workers. Belem Villegas, ex- supervisora of use in the plant of Greenville, said that to his head it did not like those “that complained frequently”. By five years until the spring of the 2005, Villegas contracted workers and served like interpreter for employees who spoke Spanish. It shared her office with the medical director of the plant and said that at least 20 workers arrived daily saying that their hands, wrists and arms hurt to them. He said to them to the plant managers that were urgent to send to the injured ones to the doctor, but they often refused themselves. “They said, `Belem, if they continue coming to the office are going away to have to go'”. The workers received the message. “If complain you you have left yourself without work”, Villegas said. House of Raeford did not respond the questionings based on the declarations of Villegas. The company said they dismissed that it because it “accepted money to favor potential employees”. Villegas denies the accusation and considers that it was dismissed, partly, because she began to speak to name of the workers. The Observer entrevistó to more than 50 ex- workers of House of Raeford. Ten said that they were dismissed after to report injuries. The officials of the company said that the workers must say to them to the supervisors if they hurt themselves and they will be sent to the stations of first aid of the plant, or with doctors outside the company, if therefore they need it. “Certainly, we worked hard to maintain a place of healthful and safe work, and to fulfill the state and federal laws”, said Barry Cronic, manager of complex of the plant of Greenville in an answer in writing. “If any supervisor is discouraging to his employees to report his injuries, that supervisor is violating the policy of the company”. Carolina Cross said that their requests of aid repeatedly were ignored. Cross is a young mother who took the work cutting wings from chicken in the plant of Greenville in the 2003. After which their hands began to beat of pain, according to said, she was where the nurse of the company, that in several occasions gave an ointment him it sent and it of return to the line of work. “It us absolutely does not help” said. For the summer of the 2006, she said: “My bones hurt to me… if it had continued, my hands would arrive at the point where I could not do nothing”. Later, Cross left the plant. House of Raeford declined to comment the specific allegations of many workers, being indicated that without signed permissions, it cannot discuss to details of his health or file of use. Generally the company said that it has found “many inaccuracies”, in the information offered by the workers to the Observer, but it declined to give details. “The pleas done by these ex- employees do not represent of right way and exact the policies or managemental practices of House of Raeford Farms”, says a written document of the company. Injuries without reporting To the businesses it is demanded to maintain a record of the most serious injuries and diseases to them in books of control of the Administration of Security and Occupational Health. But it is an honor system, and the companies must only give to these controls to regulators and employees if are requested it. The regulators use books to notice tendencies of problems in work places. The newspaper obtained four years of books of control in plants of the company in Greenville, West Columbia and Raeford. In a sample of workers in districts bordering to the plants, the Observer confirmed 31 sufficiently serious injuries to be written down for the regulators. In 12 of these cases, the injuries did not leave reported in the control book. Seferino Guadalupe was leading a machine moving trowels of breasts of turkey in one of the two plants of Raeford, in November of the 2006, when, said, that the brakes failed and hit against a wall. The surgeons inserted nails to repair his destroyed ankle. Bernestine Wright said that their hands entumieron after months cutting chicken in small pieces in the plant of Greenville. She said that a nurse of the company refused to send it to the doctor when he complained pains. The pain increased so intensely, said she, that it went to the doctor and it received medicine for the pain. It was diagnosed with syndrome of carpiano tunnel in the 2005, in agreement with the company/signature of lawyers represented that it in a case of labor compensation. Lucas Hernandez cut its arm with a knife in the summer of the 2005, while it was in the line of production in the plant of West Columbia. It lacked to the work by two days due to the pain, according to said. No of these injuries appears in books of control of injuries of House of Raeford. Aside from the 31 injuries confirmed by the Observer, 10 workers more described serious injuries that were not reported, but the newspaper could not confirm its medical treatment. Whitmore, the expert in maintenance of OSHA records, examined books of control of House of Raeford and the details of the 41 injuries found by the Observer. It concluded that the company broke the law of security in the work field, when failing to fulfill in the registry of more than half of those injuries. “These are severe, serious cases and debilitating”, Whitmore said. Officials of the company said that they follow the OSHA rules to report injuries and that are not abreast of any injuries related to the work which they have been excluídas of control books. Lewis, the director of security of the company could not explain because the accident of Guadalupe was not reported and it described as a “isolated case”. It said that the company has corrected its books of control. Officials of the company said that the pleas of Wright were inexact, but could not give details. In the plant of West Columbia, the manager of security Mike Flowers said that because Hernandez remained in house by their account, and that she did not call to his supervisor, the managers did not know of the reaches of their injury. “There are many dark subjects”, said Flowers. Trivialities, said Whitmore. “The supervisor knew that there was an injury. The person lacked to the work by the pain caused by an injury in the work”, said. “That was clearly recordable and point”.
A pain epidemic
The pain would return, knew it to she. As surely as the turkeys by the line would come, like 30 every minute, ready to be cut, deshuesados and to be sliced. Karina Zorita knew this, almost four years ago, when of Raeford Farms considered to look for use in House, the bird-raising plant throughout the highway near its home, in the countryside in the east of Carolina of the North. He is dangerous, noticed his friendly to him. Too painful. Your hands. She knew this. But really she did not know it. She could not know how that in the bird-raising plants in all United States, the workers risk their hands and wrists, simply to go to the work every day. She could not know that the injuries frequently come to do the work as they taught to him, that the doctors say that thousands of movements that they include to haul, to cut and to start, required daily in the bird-raising ones can cause irreversible injuries. Like the black lungs in the brown industry of the coal and lungs in the one of the textiles, the hands of the bird-raising industry undergo a threat in the long term. For two decades, you have been disordering musculoescleróticos in the bird-raising ones and empacadoras plants of meat generated a protest public. Legislators and officials of the government promised a change. Now, an investigation of the Observer reveals that the hands of the workers of the bird-raising ones are more than ever in danger. The increasing demand in the United States by you cut specialized presents/displays an ergonomic nightmare for the workers. In the plants, them regulation inspection is handicapped. In the line, the labor force has become predominantly Latin, frequently undocumented, with greater probability of being exploded. Reporters of the Observer spoke with more than 130 workers injured in the work in 13 bird-raising ones, in the Carolinas and Georgia. Near three quarters of the complaints they are of injuries in the hands and the wrists. “An epidemic”, says Sends Compa, an instructor of the Cornell university and author of “Human Rights Watch”, that in the 2004 entrevistó to hundreds of employees in the bird-raising ones of the United States and does not remember any that a pain related to the work did not undergo. Many, he says, suffered pains in the hands and the wrists. “Cruel”, Steve Striffler says, an anthropologist of the University of Arkansas and author, who in this decade, passed two periods of three months each, working in the bird-raising ones of Tyson and remembers: “Whatever I saw that he worked in any place of the line by six months, definitively he had a hand or injured wrist”. The majority of their fellow workers was Latin. “As soon as they narrow his hand I know what they do”, Pablo Forestier says, doctor of Latin American Medical Family Clinic in Monroe, where very frequently he sees workers of the Tyson plant. Many, he says, begin to suffer to only two months to take hold, to cut and to express. Few, nevertheless, complain in the work about fear to lose their use. The spokesman of Tyson, Gary Mickelson, said that the company requires that all the employees report each injury or disease related to the work, without mattering how small is, allowing the company “to reduce any potential severity dramatically”. The representatives of the industry say that the work in bird-raising is now one more a safer occupation, with more tools and workstations designed ergonomically - and more machines replacing to people to carry out tasks like gutting birds. “The security in the work place is a fundamental objective and a main value of all the companies processors of poultries”, said to Richard Lobb, spokesman of National Chicken Council, indicating to surveys of the Department of Work of the United States that shows a progressive reduction in the injuries reported in work in bird-raising from 2000. The critics say that these numbers are deceptive, that the companies ignore and they do not report the complaints of the injuries that undergo the workers of the bird-raising ones. Karina Zorita did not know any these statistics. It was an undocumented immigrant. Unmarried mother of 28 years, whose two smaller children they remained in Chilpancingo, Mexico. It took the work in House of Raeford like “Epenisa”, the name of her false identification card, that she bought after arrived at Raeford. She said that the hour won around $6,50, weighing turkey breasts. After more of a year, she was transferred to a different part in the line, where she removed the bones from the turkey cooked with his fingers. The pain began. She knew that she would come. But she did not know devastating how was going to be. Revolutionary product That strategy was accelerated makes a quarter of century with the appearance of the product of more revolutionary chicken. The “McNugget”. In 1983, McDonald's as large as introduced to the national market the chicken pieces a mouthful, preferred by the children, easy to presumably eat in the car and a healthful alternative to hamburgers (the consumers did not know that they were fried in head of cattle fat). Two years, McDonald's was transformed into the second greater salesman of chicken, after Kentucky Fried Chicken. The launching ignited the demand of the consumer by bird-raising product diversity, a tendency that continues nowadays. This has not been the good news for the bird-raising hands of workers. Forty miles to the west of Columbia, Carolina of the South, in the town of Newberry, next to the inter-state one, a simple brick building is soothes of Emmanuel Family Clinic, where a signal upon the reception says: “God him Mistress”. In the interior, two doctors are interrogated about how many bird-raising workers have seen. Near 1.000 in the last seven years, Garci'a says to doctor Jorge. Near 100 in the last 18 months, doctor Franco Godoy says. This means more than a dozen to the month that arrives at the clinic with injuries in the shoulder, burns and fractures, all of them with an ailment common. “I do not know a single worker who does not have some type of pain in his hands”, Garci'a says. The patients, who in their majority are of Mexico and Guatemala, also arrive at the Emmanuel clinic from the near plants from Louis Rich and Amick Farms and from House of Raeford, in West Columbia. Why to travel 40 miles to see the doctor? “Because we spoke Spanish”, Godoy says.
Officials of House of Raeford and Kraft Foods, first company of Louis Rich, said that the indices of injuries in their bird-raising plants are between lowest of the industry. The officials of Amick Farm did not respond to the questions done by the Observer. Garci'a says of their patients: “I have people who say to me: `Please does not say to them that I came particular doctor. If they find out, they will dismiss to me'”. This is the contradiction - the workers who worry to lose a detrimental work - that they put to the doctors to the limit of the problem of the business of the bird-raising ones. For the workers, the problem is frequently a simple equation: how much money can win versus how much they can hold. That decision, says the doctors, is done generally, without important knowledge on a basic piece of the equipment - the hand. Resistant and delicate “It is like a small Swiss clock”, says doctor James Boatright, an orthopedic specialist and surgeon in Charlotte. “It does not need much so that colapse”. That clock is driven coverall by nine muscles - the extrinsic ones - that in the wrist become nine thin but strong cords, calls sinews. These cords extend throughout the area of the palm and through the envelope of the fine weave throughout the fingers, creating a pulley system that allows that the fingers are curved and stretched smoothly. Greatest of the envelopes it is in the wrist, where the nine sinews as large as meet around a nerve a pencil number 2. The complete package, accommodated within an envelope, is the carpiano tunnel. “The carpiano tunnel is like a cake tin”, says Boatright. “If to some it tightens it thing or any thing increases its volume, puts pressure in the nerve. It is from where the pain comes”. That pain can come by different causes, says the doctor. Arthritis. Familiar history. Bad position when working. Also it can come, say they, of frequent movements and repetitive, when pressing the scissors or making manifolds pieces, of each one of the hundreds of birds that move in the line of cut hourly. It can come, to take the bones of the legs and breasts of the hot chickens, in a cold room. That was the work that Karina Zorita says that of Raeford was assigned in the middle of 2006 in House. She says that quickly their hands began to hurt to him, so it went to see the nurse, sent who it of return to the line. Then, she says, her supervisor said to him that the doors were open if it wanted to go away. Representatives of House of Raeford said that the story of the events is “incorrect” but they refused to comment about specific allegations of Zorita and other workers, said that without signed authorization, it is impossible to discuss about the details of his health and histories of use. By the end of 2006, Zorita said that already she was fed up. “There were times that cried in the line because my fingers were being burned”, she said. She went to a near clinic, where a doctor recommended rest and slight workings to him. She remembers to her supervisor saying to him “not” her order of slight workings. Zorita took near three weeks free, two of paid them, says she. The hour was winning around $9. It was sending $150 weeklies to his mother to sustain to his children. “She was worried that they ran to me”, she says. At the beginning of 2007, after returning to the work, the pain caused that Zorita returned to the clinic, she says. There, a doctor recommended to him that he saw a specialist. When he called to the work, he says she, he was dismissed to waste long time. He was 31 years old. He did not have money and he was himself forced to live with friendly, that saw their temblorosas hands and said: “He needs better aid”. In March, the pain still was very intense, went to another clinic in Maxton, near the movable house of its friendly. It was diagnosed with “bilateral pain the hands”, the leaves of remission of the doctor, demonstrate that it said to him that it had to see a specialist. Without health insurance, she says, could not pay the visit to a specialist. She has syndrome of carpal tunnel? She does not know and Boatright refuses to speculate without examining it. But those symptoms can easily be explicable, says the doctor. The great knot to the bottom of its palm? Consequence of tendinitis, in which, the sinews are irritated, frequently with a new and repetitive activity. The incapacity to stretch its knotted fingers? Symptom of the evil called in English “trigger to finger”, a condition in which the envelope in the base of the finger becomes too heavy and contracts, incapacitating to the sinew to slip, urging a cycle of inflammation until the fingers are blocked. The incapacity to take hold a spoon, sweeps, a water glass? Consequence of the advanced state of the syndrome of carpiano tunnel, in which the nerve is alleviated with the loss of sanguineous flow. The doctors say that the key of the treatment of this problem, is to detect it before the damage is done. “You would want to treat the people who need care, urgent, more soon possible”, Garci'a says. Boatright says about the syndrome of carpiano tunnel: “If it is detected at the outset, it allows the blood to flow of return to the nerve to recover. But the continuous pressure aggravates the nerve to a state that does not work”. Zorita says: “Nothing hurt to me when I began to work there”. And: “My children are still small. They still need to me”. And: “My hands no longer can work”. “I cannot do nothing”. In the spring of the 2007, without work and insurance of health, Karina Zorita he took a bus from Carolina of the North towards the border with Mexico. In three days he was in his house of Chilpancingo, with his small houses and dirty streets. She lives with her mother and children now on 8 and 9 years. The hens in the patio provide eggs and meat. She depends on her mother to kill the birds. Her hands, she says, always follow equal - shaking, always hurting. She has problems to rise of the bed and to clean up. “I cannot do nothing”, says she by telephone. He is unfortunate to be in house, where it cannot work nor maintain its family. It would like to return to the United States, but it knows that either it could not work here. It says that it wishes never to have worked in the bird-raising plant. It says that their friendly warned to him. What would say to him if a friend went to see it? It would recommend that work to him? A pause. Yes, she says. “The people need to work”, says she. “It is the unique work that there is”.
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