99-16 67road
Forest Hills, N.Y. 11375
24 May 2011
Safety Director Barry White
200 Constitution Avenue
Washington, D.C. 20210
Dear Safety Director White
Hello and good day. My name is Edgar Pal and I live in Forest Hills New York. I attend school at Laguardia Community College and am taking an English 101 course in which we are reading Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser. I am writing this letter because this book has opened my eyes to the dangerous working conditions in our countries meat packing industries that are faced by workers everyday. This all ranges from the daily slaughterhouse employees to the over night cleaning crews that clean up the daily messes. Their are way too many workers getting seriously injured and killed while working in our countries top three largest Meatpacking Companies (ConAgra, IBP, and Excel) and not enough is being done to prevent these things from happening. I understand that the purpose of your company OSHA is to prevent work-related injuries, illnesses, and occupational fatality by issuing and enforcing standards for workplace safety and health. However you guys are doing a very poor job and many uneducated immigrant workers are paying the full price through pinching nerves, losing fingers, and limbs, as well as many losing their lives.
Barry, let me first begin with saying that these workers have very demanding and difficult jobs. Jobs that you would never want to have. Today, the rate of injury in the meat packing industry is three times that of private industry overall, and meat packing was noted by Human Rights Watch as being "the most dangerous factory job in America”. They work long hours that sometimes are inhuman. Their work is all physical and there pay is very low. Supervisors constantly force these workers to work as fast as possible like an assembly line while wielding and swinging knifes at meat and carcasses in crammed conditions in order to reach company earnings, profits, and goals. Most of these employees are immigrants, however they are human beings like you and my self. Now do you think that just because they are immigrants, it is all right to treat them in this manner?
Adding to all of this, Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows (from 2003-2007) the rate of illnesses and injuries for workers in "animal slaughtering and processing" was over twice as high as the national average, and the rate of illnesses alone was over ten times the national average. This shows that your company is not doing its job correctly and as good as it can when it comes to the safety of working conditions faced by slaughterhouse employees. What is the point of the presence of a company such as OSHA if the rate of illnesses and injuries in these slaughterhouses are constantly on the rise. Conditions should actually be getting better, and so many of these workers should not be getting injured. To top this all off, “a cleaning crew member by the name Henry Wolfe had been overcome by hydrogen sulfide fumes while cleaning the very same tank that had caused the death of three men, eight years earlier. Another worker, Gary Sanders had tried to rescue him resulting in the death of both men. Then OSHA later fined National Beef for its negligence that was $480 for each mans death”. Now these two men have names that sound to be American which means that they were legal workers in this country. Do you think that a human beings life is worth such a low sum? That not only is it not fair to the death of that individual, but embarrassing and selfish that you guys would put such a low cost on the life of a human being especially when your suppose to be looking out for us.
I believe that the solution for the safety and the well being of these meatpacking factory workers is very possible, however will take some time. I believe that the change starts with the company you work for, and you because these meatpacking slaughterhouse don’t care much about there workers and your the only ones that can help them. There are no strict rules that they have to go by as well as no one that they have to fear. You as well as the rest of the OSHA company need to reinforce better safety rules and regulations at these plants as well as remember that every human has to look out for one another. This is because I promise you, that if it were you who had no choice but to work in theses slaughterhouses under these dangerous and life threatening conditions, you would also want someone to do something about it.
Sincerely,
Edgar Pal
Work Cited
http://www.osha.gov/html/Feed_Back.html. May 28, 2011
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meat_packing_industry. May 28, 2011
http://www.sustainabletable.org/issues/processing. May 28, 2011
Schlosser, Eric. Fast Food Nation the dark side of the all-american meal. New York, N.Y. 10022: First Harper Perennial edition, 2005.
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