Sunday, May 10, 2020
As Oil Price Plummets, Call to Nationalize Industry Rises
May 9, 2020
The price of oil dropped below zero, prompting new subsidies from the Federal Reserve. Progressive voices in the U.S. and Canada have a different idea: nationalization as a way to wind down the sector, tackle the climate crisis and create a just economic transition.
May 9, 2020
The price of oil dropped below zero, prompting new subsidies from the Federal Reserve. Progressive voices in the U.S. and Canada have a different idea: nationalization as a way to wind down the sector, tackle the climate crisis and create a just economic transition.
US Largest Public Utility To Outsource Hundreds Of Jobs Amid Covid-19
Despite Trump’s ‘America First’ policy, the Tennessee Valley Authority is outsourcing hundreds of federal jobs overseas.
World Food Programme head warns Covid-19 pandemic could provoke 'famines of biblical proportions'
08/05/2020
THE INTERVIEW © FRANCE 24
By:Marc Perelman
By:Marc Perelman
The UN's World Food Programme (WFP) is warning of potential famines of "biblical proportions" as the Covid-19 pandemic affects countries in an already dire situation. In an interview with FRANCE 24, the United Nation's WFP Executive Director David Beasley said he was especially worried about a breakdown in the supply chain that allows his agency to provide food to dozens of millions of people around the globe.
WFP head David Beasley expressed confidence that donor nations would respond to a $4.7 billion fundraising call launched this week by the UN to help those in need, despite the recession hitting many rich countries. He also stressed that top Trump administration officials and key US congressional leaders had reassured him that they understood the need to maintain funding for the food emergency.
However, he called on "the world's billionaires" to do more, saying, "It's time for you to step up in a way you've never stepped up before; people are in need ... this is a one-time phenomenon and we need your help."
He warned that the situation in Africa was likely to become much worse in the coming weeks, in large part because of the economic collapse provoked by the Covid-19 pandemic. "Almost a quarter of a billion people will be marching towards starvation because of the economic deterioration from Covid, wars, conflicts... It is a perfect storm. I do wish I were exaggerating, but we are really looking at what could be famines of biblical proportions in multiple countries, and especially in Africa," Beasley told FRANCE 24's Marc Perelman.
WFP head David Beasley expressed confidence that donor nations would respond to a $4.7 billion fundraising call launched this week by the UN to help those in need, despite the recession hitting many rich countries. He also stressed that top Trump administration officials and key US congressional leaders had reassured him that they understood the need to maintain funding for the food emergency.
However, he called on "the world's billionaires" to do more, saying, "It's time for you to step up in a way you've never stepped up before; people are in need ... this is a one-time phenomenon and we need your help."
He warned that the situation in Africa was likely to become much worse in the coming weeks, in large part because of the economic collapse provoked by the Covid-19 pandemic. "Almost a quarter of a billion people will be marching towards starvation because of the economic deterioration from Covid, wars, conflicts... It is a perfect storm. I do wish I were exaggerating, but we are really looking at what could be famines of biblical proportions in multiple countries, and especially in Africa," Beasley told FRANCE 24's Marc Perelman.
TRUMPETTES IN THE LAND OF OZ
Arrests, conspiracy theories at Australia anti-lockdown protest
10/05/2020
Arrests, conspiracy theories at Australia anti-lockdown protest
10/05/2020
An anti-lockdown protester holds placards on the steps of Victoria's state parliament in Melbourne William WEST AFP
Melbourne (AFP)
Ten people were arrested and a police officer injured Sunday at an anti-lockdown protest in Melbourne, where demonstrators claimed coronavirus was a government-engineered conspiracy designed to control the population.
About 150 protesters rallied outside Victoria's state parliament to protest against a shutdown aimed at stemming the spread of COVID-19, while also peddling conspiracy theories about the virus.
Most Australian states and territories have begun easing restrictions, but Victoria has delayed relaxing its measures amid an outbreak at a Melbourne slaughterhouse that caused a spike in new cases.
In scenes reminiscent of anti-lockdown protests in the United States, demonstrators carried placards reading "fight for your freedom and rights", and directed their ire at the founder of Microsoft, chanting "arrest Bill Gates".
Fano Panayides, 37, said he was sceptical of the government declaring the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic, saying he believed it was a cover for authorities to gain greater control over the population.
"If this thing was half as deadly as they said it was, with half the population out there still working -- even with the lockdown orders -- this thing would've spread like wildfire through Australia. There'd be no stopping it," he told AFP.
Health experts credit Australia's success in curbing the spread of COVID-19 to an effective nationwide shutdown.
A spokeswoman for Victoria police said 10 people were arrested at Sunday's rally, mostly for breaching social distancing and stay-at-home orders.
"Three of the offenders will also be charged with assaulting a police officer, and another offender will be charged with discharging a missile after allegedly throwing a bottle at police," she said.
The spokeswoman added that police were working to track down other protest attendees, who could face Aus$1,600 fines for breaching coronavirus shutdown rules.
Australian chief medical officer Brendan Murphy said there was "a lot of very silly misinformation out there", including that the virus was linked to 5G.
"I have unfortunately received a lot of communication from these conspiracy theorists myself. It is complete nonsense. 5G has got nothing at all to do with coronavirus," he said.
Australia has recorded about 7,000 cases of COVID-19 and less than 100 deaths from the virus.
Melbourne (AFP)
Ten people were arrested and a police officer injured Sunday at an anti-lockdown protest in Melbourne, where demonstrators claimed coronavirus was a government-engineered conspiracy designed to control the population.
About 150 protesters rallied outside Victoria's state parliament to protest against a shutdown aimed at stemming the spread of COVID-19, while also peddling conspiracy theories about the virus.
Most Australian states and territories have begun easing restrictions, but Victoria has delayed relaxing its measures amid an outbreak at a Melbourne slaughterhouse that caused a spike in new cases.
In scenes reminiscent of anti-lockdown protests in the United States, demonstrators carried placards reading "fight for your freedom and rights", and directed their ire at the founder of Microsoft, chanting "arrest Bill Gates".
Fano Panayides, 37, said he was sceptical of the government declaring the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic, saying he believed it was a cover for authorities to gain greater control over the population.
"If this thing was half as deadly as they said it was, with half the population out there still working -- even with the lockdown orders -- this thing would've spread like wildfire through Australia. There'd be no stopping it," he told AFP.
Health experts credit Australia's success in curbing the spread of COVID-19 to an effective nationwide shutdown.
A spokeswoman for Victoria police said 10 people were arrested at Sunday's rally, mostly for breaching social distancing and stay-at-home orders.
"Three of the offenders will also be charged with assaulting a police officer, and another offender will be charged with discharging a missile after allegedly throwing a bottle at police," she said.
The spokeswoman added that police were working to track down other protest attendees, who could face Aus$1,600 fines for breaching coronavirus shutdown rules.
Australian chief medical officer Brendan Murphy said there was "a lot of very silly misinformation out there", including that the virus was linked to 5G.
"I have unfortunately received a lot of communication from these conspiracy theorists myself. It is complete nonsense. 5G has got nothing at all to do with coronavirus," he said.
Australia has recorded about 7,000 cases of COVID-19 and less than 100 deaths from the virus.
COVID Bailout Cash Goes To Big Players That Have Paid Millions To Settle Allegations Of Wrongdoing
2020/5/9
©Kaiser Health News
The Trump administration has sent hundreds of millions of dollars in pandemic-related bailouts to health care providers with checkered histories, including a Florida-based cancer center that agreed to pay a $100 million criminal penalty as part of a federal antitrust investigation.
At least half of the top 10 recipients, part of a group that received $20 billion in emergency funding from the Department of Health and Human Services, have paid millions in recent years either in criminal penalties or to settle allegations related to improper billing and other practices, a Kaiser Health News review of government records shows.
They include Florida Cancer Specialists & Research Institute, one of the nation’s largest U.S. oncology practices, which in late Aprilsaid it would pay a $100 million penalty for engaging in a nearly two-decade-long antitrust scheme to suppress competition. A top Justice Department lawyer described the plot as “limiting treatment options available to cancer patients in order to line their pockets.” The company, which is required to pay the first $40 million in penalties by June 1, received more than $67 million in HHS bailout funds.
HHS distributed emergency funding to hospitals and other providers to help offset revenue losses or expenses related to COVID-19. In April, it distributed the first $50 billion based on providers’ net patient revenue, a calculation that gives more money to bigger systems or institutions charging higher prices.
Companies that have attested to receiving payments as of May 4 collectively received roughly $20 billion. The list is likely to change in the coming days as other companies confirm they’ve received money.
In total, the CARES Act, signed into law by President Donald Trump in March, provides $100 billion in emergency funding. Subsequent coronavirus relief legislation added another $75 billion. Money has also been steered to hot spots with high numbers of COVID-19 patients, rural health care providers and the Indian Health Service.
Of the companies documented to date, other top recipients ― including Dignity Health in Phoenix, the Cleveland Clinic, Houston’s Memorial Hermann Health System and Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston — have paid millions in recent years to resolve allegations related to improper billing in federal health programs, false claims to increase their payments or lax oversight that enabled employees to steal prescription painkillers.
Dignity Health, one of the largest hospital systems in the West, received $180.3 million in HHS bailout funds, making it the top recipient listed. It has settled civil accusations by DOJ that it submitted false claims to Medicare and TriCare, the military health care program.
The Cleveland Clinic, which in 2015 paid $1.74 million to settlefederal allegations that it mischarged Medicare for costly spinal procedures to increase their billings and has entered into other similar settlements, received $103.3 million from HHS, the second-largest amount.
Memorial Hermann Health System and Massachusetts General Hospital received more than $93 million and $58 million, respectively. In 2018, Memorial Hermann paidnearly $2 million to the government to settle allegations that it improperly billed government health care programs by charging for higher-cost services when patients only needed lower-cost outpatient services.
Massachusetts General Hospital in 2015 paid the federal government $2.3 million to settle allegationsthat lax oversight enabled hospital employees to steal thousands of prescription medications, mostly addictive painkillers, for personal use.
Malcolm Sparrow, a professor at the Harvard John F. Kennedy School of Government, said the HHS methodology for its general distribution of relief funds is “a little bit worrying.”
“If you peg the amount based on historical volume and you’ve got good reason to believe that historical volume is inflated due to fraud and abuse, the irony is that they get more money because they’re more dishonest,” Sparrow said. “But you can’t prove that in a short period of time.”
Public tolerance for fraud and abuse naturally rises during times of emergency, Sparrow said, and now is not the time to revisit historical decisions to determine which companies are entitled to federal relief based on legal issues.
“I think that’s a tough case to make,” he said.
HHS has criteria for disqualifying providersfrom receiving bailout money. But even the strongest condition carries a broad caveat: None of the funds may be used for grants to any corporation convicted of a felony criminal violation within the preceding two years ― unless officials have decided that it is not necessary to prohibit them from doing business with the federal government.
“It’s sort of a high bar” for someone to be disqualified for this money, said Roger Cohen, a health care lawyer at Goodwin who specializes in fraud and anti-kickback law.
The Florida oncology provider has been charged with a felony and admitted to an antitrust crime, however federal prosecutors agreed to defer any prosecution and trial because a criminal conviction would have “significant collateral consequences” for its patients, the DOJ said.
Beyond that, HHS in its terms states that providers have to certify that they are not excluded from participating in federal health care programs like Medicare and Medicaid and have not had their Medicare billing privileges revoked.
The HHS Inspector General has the authority to exclude practitioners and health care companies for a wide variety of reasons — including a conviction of fraud ― but it’s highly unusual for the federal government to do so with large institutions, experts say.
“I imagine there would be hesitancy to exclude the provider,” Cohen said. “I think you’d have concerns about interrupting access to care.”
An HHS spokesperson declined to comment on its existing allocations but said the department has rules in place to recoup funds and address fraudulent activity if necessary.
“Failure to comply with any term or condition is grounds for HHS to recoup some or all of the payment from the provider,” the spokesperson said.
In a statement, Florida Cancer Specialists signaled it intended to use the funding.
“During this health crisis, we have continued to keep the doors of our more than 80 facilities open to ensure that cancer patients have access to care and treatment,” Thomas Clark, the company’s chief legal officer, wrote in an email. “We plan to use these funds, if needed, in accordance with government guidelines to continue providing affordable, safe and high-quality cancer care.”
Dignity Health said, “We have had to bear significant costs to prepare for and manage the pandemic in our communities even as patient volumes have been dramatically reduced across our hospitals.”
In October 2014, Dignity agreed to pay $37 millionafter the Department of Justice alleged it admitted patients to 13 of its hospitals in California, Nevada and Arizona who could have been treated on a “less costly, outpatient basis.” The civil case involved patients treated for elective heart procedures, such as pacemakers and stents, and other conditions. The company did not acknowledge wrongdoing in settling the case.
“Charging the government for higher-cost inpatient services that patients do not need wastes the country’s vital health care dollars,” acting Assistant Attorney General Joyce Branda for the Justice Department’s Civil Division said at the time. “This department will continue its work to stop abuses of the nation’s health care resources and to ensure patients receive the most appropriate care.”
Dignity said that independent annual audits were conducted after the False Claims Act settlement in 2014 and “no additional concerns were raised related to this issue.”
Massachusetts General Hospital and Memorial Hermann did not respond to requests for comment. The Cleveland Clinic confirmed the amount of money received from HHS but declined to comment further.
Kaiser Health News(KHN) is a national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundationwhich is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
©Kaiser Health News
The Trump administration has sent hundreds of millions of dollars in pandemic-related bailouts to health care providers with checkered histories, including a Florida-based cancer center that agreed to pay a $100 million criminal penalty as part of a federal antitrust investigation.
At least half of the top 10 recipients, part of a group that received $20 billion in emergency funding from the Department of Health and Human Services, have paid millions in recent years either in criminal penalties or to settle allegations related to improper billing and other practices, a Kaiser Health News review of government records shows.
They include Florida Cancer Specialists & Research Institute, one of the nation’s largest U.S. oncology practices, which in late Aprilsaid it would pay a $100 million penalty for engaging in a nearly two-decade-long antitrust scheme to suppress competition. A top Justice Department lawyer described the plot as “limiting treatment options available to cancer patients in order to line their pockets.” The company, which is required to pay the first $40 million in penalties by June 1, received more than $67 million in HHS bailout funds.
HHS distributed emergency funding to hospitals and other providers to help offset revenue losses or expenses related to COVID-19. In April, it distributed the first $50 billion based on providers’ net patient revenue, a calculation that gives more money to bigger systems or institutions charging higher prices.
Companies that have attested to receiving payments as of May 4 collectively received roughly $20 billion. The list is likely to change in the coming days as other companies confirm they’ve received money.
In total, the CARES Act, signed into law by President Donald Trump in March, provides $100 billion in emergency funding. Subsequent coronavirus relief legislation added another $75 billion. Money has also been steered to hot spots with high numbers of COVID-19 patients, rural health care providers and the Indian Health Service.
Of the companies documented to date, other top recipients ― including Dignity Health in Phoenix, the Cleveland Clinic, Houston’s Memorial Hermann Health System and Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston — have paid millions in recent years to resolve allegations related to improper billing in federal health programs, false claims to increase their payments or lax oversight that enabled employees to steal prescription painkillers.
Dignity Health, one of the largest hospital systems in the West, received $180.3 million in HHS bailout funds, making it the top recipient listed. It has settled civil accusations by DOJ that it submitted false claims to Medicare and TriCare, the military health care program.
The Cleveland Clinic, which in 2015 paid $1.74 million to settlefederal allegations that it mischarged Medicare for costly spinal procedures to increase their billings and has entered into other similar settlements, received $103.3 million from HHS, the second-largest amount.
Memorial Hermann Health System and Massachusetts General Hospital received more than $93 million and $58 million, respectively. In 2018, Memorial Hermann paidnearly $2 million to the government to settle allegations that it improperly billed government health care programs by charging for higher-cost services when patients only needed lower-cost outpatient services.
Massachusetts General Hospital in 2015 paid the federal government $2.3 million to settle allegationsthat lax oversight enabled hospital employees to steal thousands of prescription medications, mostly addictive painkillers, for personal use.
Malcolm Sparrow, a professor at the Harvard John F. Kennedy School of Government, said the HHS methodology for its general distribution of relief funds is “a little bit worrying.”
“If you peg the amount based on historical volume and you’ve got good reason to believe that historical volume is inflated due to fraud and abuse, the irony is that they get more money because they’re more dishonest,” Sparrow said. “But you can’t prove that in a short period of time.”
Public tolerance for fraud and abuse naturally rises during times of emergency, Sparrow said, and now is not the time to revisit historical decisions to determine which companies are entitled to federal relief based on legal issues.
“I think that’s a tough case to make,” he said.
HHS has criteria for disqualifying providersfrom receiving bailout money. But even the strongest condition carries a broad caveat: None of the funds may be used for grants to any corporation convicted of a felony criminal violation within the preceding two years ― unless officials have decided that it is not necessary to prohibit them from doing business with the federal government.
“It’s sort of a high bar” for someone to be disqualified for this money, said Roger Cohen, a health care lawyer at Goodwin who specializes in fraud and anti-kickback law.
The Florida oncology provider has been charged with a felony and admitted to an antitrust crime, however federal prosecutors agreed to defer any prosecution and trial because a criminal conviction would have “significant collateral consequences” for its patients, the DOJ said.
Beyond that, HHS in its terms states that providers have to certify that they are not excluded from participating in federal health care programs like Medicare and Medicaid and have not had their Medicare billing privileges revoked.
The HHS Inspector General has the authority to exclude practitioners and health care companies for a wide variety of reasons — including a conviction of fraud ― but it’s highly unusual for the federal government to do so with large institutions, experts say.
“I imagine there would be hesitancy to exclude the provider,” Cohen said. “I think you’d have concerns about interrupting access to care.”
An HHS spokesperson declined to comment on its existing allocations but said the department has rules in place to recoup funds and address fraudulent activity if necessary.
“Failure to comply with any term or condition is grounds for HHS to recoup some or all of the payment from the provider,” the spokesperson said.
In a statement, Florida Cancer Specialists signaled it intended to use the funding.
“During this health crisis, we have continued to keep the doors of our more than 80 facilities open to ensure that cancer patients have access to care and treatment,” Thomas Clark, the company’s chief legal officer, wrote in an email. “We plan to use these funds, if needed, in accordance with government guidelines to continue providing affordable, safe and high-quality cancer care.”
Dignity Health said, “We have had to bear significant costs to prepare for and manage the pandemic in our communities even as patient volumes have been dramatically reduced across our hospitals.”
In October 2014, Dignity agreed to pay $37 millionafter the Department of Justice alleged it admitted patients to 13 of its hospitals in California, Nevada and Arizona who could have been treated on a “less costly, outpatient basis.” The civil case involved patients treated for elective heart procedures, such as pacemakers and stents, and other conditions. The company did not acknowledge wrongdoing in settling the case.
“Charging the government for higher-cost inpatient services that patients do not need wastes the country’s vital health care dollars,” acting Assistant Attorney General Joyce Branda for the Justice Department’s Civil Division said at the time. “This department will continue its work to stop abuses of the nation’s health care resources and to ensure patients receive the most appropriate care.”
Dignity said that independent annual audits were conducted after the False Claims Act settlement in 2014 and “no additional concerns were raised related to this issue.”
Massachusetts General Hospital and Memorial Hermann did not respond to requests for comment. The Cleveland Clinic confirmed the amount of money received from HHS but declined to comment further.
Kaiser Health News(KHN) is a national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundationwhich is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
Saturday, May 09, 2020
Testing uneven, or nonexistent, at meatpacking plants with COVID-19 outbreaks
2020/5/9 18:31 (EDT)
©Star Tribune (Minneapolis)
Workers trim beef at the Tyson Fresh Meats plant in Dakota City, Neb. in 2012.
- Keith Myers/Kansas City Star/TNS
MINNEAPOLIS — Nearly two weeks after President Donald Trump proclaimed that meat processors should remain open, thousands of U.S. meatpacking workers are still not being tested for the coronavirus.
Pork, beef and poultry laborers have been asked to return to fast-moving, shoulder-to-shoulder meat-cutting lines with no clear idea of who does or does not carry the virus. Across the country, meat factories have been the scenes of the largest outbreaks in the country.
“It really is a death march going into those facilities until workers can be tested,” said Joe Enriquez Henry of the League of United Latin American Citizens, a group that’s communicating with meatpacking workers in Iowa and fighting for their protection.
“We can’t solve this until everyone is tested,” he said. “That’s the clear thing that needs to happen, and it’s not happening.”
The only guidance from the federal government has been that meat processors should “consider” tests. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue wrote a letter to governors last week urging that meat plants remain open, but he didn’t mention testing workers.
That’s left meat processors with no obligation to test for COVID-19, even as many thousands of workers have been infected and the death toll among and around them is rising. In Minnesota, the spouse of a worker at a Jennie-O turkey plant in Melrose died last week.
Meat processors, who were quick to applaud the president’s order that they stay open, continue to shutter plants because of outbreaks. Last week, at least 10,000 hogs a day were being euthanized in Minnesota because of a lack of slaughterhouse capacity.
Some of the plants that remain open are running at reduced capacity because of absenteeism. Workers are afraid to go to work.
On her own
Jomari de Jesus is a Honduran asylum-seeker and mother of two who works for a contractor that cleans a Jennie-O turkey processing plant in Willmar.
For $14 an hour, seven hours a day, five days a week, de Jesus is one of 105 cleaning workers in her department. Her responsibility is to sanitize an area the size of a small apartment, including machines that process turkeys into ground meat.
She started feeling ill on April 11. “I felt like I was smelling cigarette smoke and I don’t smoke,” she said.
A stomachache, diarrhea, headaches, fever and cough followed. She thought maybe it was all caused by the cleaning chemicals. Then on April 21, one of her co-workers fainted and was taken away in an ambulance.
“I told my supervisor after the woman fainted that I wanted to go home because we were scared we might be sick too. He approved that we could go home but if we didn’t show any signs of illness to come back to work,” de Jesus said. “He did not encourage us to go to the doctor. He said we were just scared.”
She hasn’t worked since, and on her own initiative, de Jesus called the hospital, explained her symptoms and was tested for COVID-19 on April 24. Three days later, she learned she was positive and went into quarantine.
De Jesus said she has not been paid by her employer while she was isolated at home and caring for her two children. She does not have health insurance, she said, and paid $115 from her own pocket for the coronavirus test.
Austin-based Hormel Foods, which owns the Jennie-O plant in Willmar, has been testing employees, but de Jesus isn’t sure what the policy is for her employer, the cleaning company.
“I think it should be obligatory to be tested,” she said.
Hormel “encourages” returning employees to get tested for COVID-19, and as testing availability has increased, “we have been able to move more swiftly to encourage team members to get tested,” the company said in a statement to the Star Tribune.
The food company decided about a week ago to conduct mass testing at its turkey plants in Willmar and Melrose for all employees and third-party contractors who regularly work at the factories.
“Our company covered the cost,” a Hormel spokesman said.
JBS ‘reluctant to test’
Two-thirds of the workers at the JBS plant in Worthington were tested when the facility was idled two weeks ago, but that was at Gov. Tim Walz’s insistence.
“The governor wanted everyone in the plant to be tested,” said Kris Ehresmann, infectious disease director for the Minnesota Department of Health. “JBS was reluctant to test everyone. They had reservations.”
The Health Department ended up testing about 1,400 of the plant’s 2,200 workers, coordinating with local public health authorities and Sanford Health. Minnesota taxpayers will foot the bill.
Systematic testing of employees has not occurred at a similarly sized JBS pork plant in Marshalltown, Iowa, where at least dozens of workers have fallen ill from the virus. Ken Lyons, chairman of the Marshall County Board of Health, said last week he has not known the case count at the plant for three weeks.
JBS, which has put in place a long list of new safety measures in Worthington, did not respond to the Star Tribune’s questions about coronavirus testing.
Testing is “a point in time,” said Ehresmann, of the state Health Department. “All a negative test means is that today — at this point — you don’t have evidence of COVID-19.”
Employers must conduct continuous, rigorous screening of their workers in addition to giving them continued access to testing, she said.
Patchwork policies
The other companies with dominant meatpacking presence in the Upper Midwest are Smithfield and Tyson, and their testing of employees varies by location.
“I am not sure who has been testing and who has not, nor how they have been doing the testing,” said Sarah Little, a spokeswoman for the North American Meat Institute, a trade group for meatpackers.
The United Food and Commercial Workers union has called for daily testing of meatpacking workers, but that is some way off. Many plants are not testing workers at all.
Smithfield is trying to reopen its Sioux Falls, S.D., pork plant where more than 800 workers have tested positive, but any new testing is “on a voluntary basis,” the company said in a statement. The state of South Dakota is paying for the tests.
A Smithfield plant in Denison, Iowa, has been the scene of an outbreak and is running at reduced capacity because of absenteeism.
The mayor of Denison, Pamela Soseman, said last week that Smithfield “did not respond” when she asked the company to request rapid test kits from the state.
But on Friday afternoon she spoke with representatives from the company, and Smithfield workers are now being encouraged to sign up for testing at a drive-through site in town. Testing is not mandatory.
Smithfield said Friday in a statement to the Star Tribune that it has worked with the state of Iowa and local public health authorities “to make testing available for free to all Denison employees” of the company.
Tyson Foods, which has suffered outbreaks at several plants in Iowa, Nebraska and elsewhere, did not respond to a request for comment.
Silent USDA
Local news reports indicate workers are being tested in Dakota City, Neb., where a Tyson beef plant has been shut down, but not in Independence, Iowa, where Tyson has a dog-treats factory with an outbreak.
A spokeswoman for the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, which represents thousands of poultry-processing workers in the southeastern United States, said testing is not occurring “to our knowledge” at any of the plants where it represents workers. A least three workers have died from COVID-19 at a Tyson plant in Camilla, Ga., where the union represents 2,000 workers.
The USDA has given processors little instruction for reopening a plant that has been idled, including testing guidelines.
“The information we have gotten from the USDA has been very limited,” said Thom Petersen, Minnesota’s agriculture commissioner. “It has been very general — things we are already doing in Minnesota.”
Perdue, the U.S. secretary of agriculture, has told meat and poultry processors to use an interim guidance for the industry published last month by the CDC and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
That document’s only reference to testing says, “Facilities should consider the appropriate role for testing and workplace contact tracing of COVID-19-positive workers in a worksite risk assessment.”
The USDA did not respond to the Star Tribune’s questions about testing at meatpacking plants.
———
©2020 Star Tribune (Minneapolis)
MINNEAPOLIS — Nearly two weeks after President Donald Trump proclaimed that meat processors should remain open, thousands of U.S. meatpacking workers are still not being tested for the coronavirus.
Pork, beef and poultry laborers have been asked to return to fast-moving, shoulder-to-shoulder meat-cutting lines with no clear idea of who does or does not carry the virus. Across the country, meat factories have been the scenes of the largest outbreaks in the country.
“It really is a death march going into those facilities until workers can be tested,” said Joe Enriquez Henry of the League of United Latin American Citizens, a group that’s communicating with meatpacking workers in Iowa and fighting for their protection.
“We can’t solve this until everyone is tested,” he said. “That’s the clear thing that needs to happen, and it’s not happening.”
The only guidance from the federal government has been that meat processors should “consider” tests. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue wrote a letter to governors last week urging that meat plants remain open, but he didn’t mention testing workers.
That’s left meat processors with no obligation to test for COVID-19, even as many thousands of workers have been infected and the death toll among and around them is rising. In Minnesota, the spouse of a worker at a Jennie-O turkey plant in Melrose died last week.
Meat processors, who were quick to applaud the president’s order that they stay open, continue to shutter plants because of outbreaks. Last week, at least 10,000 hogs a day were being euthanized in Minnesota because of a lack of slaughterhouse capacity.
Some of the plants that remain open are running at reduced capacity because of absenteeism. Workers are afraid to go to work.
On her own
Jomari de Jesus is a Honduran asylum-seeker and mother of two who works for a contractor that cleans a Jennie-O turkey processing plant in Willmar.
For $14 an hour, seven hours a day, five days a week, de Jesus is one of 105 cleaning workers in her department. Her responsibility is to sanitize an area the size of a small apartment, including machines that process turkeys into ground meat.
She started feeling ill on April 11. “I felt like I was smelling cigarette smoke and I don’t smoke,” she said.
A stomachache, diarrhea, headaches, fever and cough followed. She thought maybe it was all caused by the cleaning chemicals. Then on April 21, one of her co-workers fainted and was taken away in an ambulance.
“I told my supervisor after the woman fainted that I wanted to go home because we were scared we might be sick too. He approved that we could go home but if we didn’t show any signs of illness to come back to work,” de Jesus said. “He did not encourage us to go to the doctor. He said we were just scared.”
She hasn’t worked since, and on her own initiative, de Jesus called the hospital, explained her symptoms and was tested for COVID-19 on April 24. Three days later, she learned she was positive and went into quarantine.
De Jesus said she has not been paid by her employer while she was isolated at home and caring for her two children. She does not have health insurance, she said, and paid $115 from her own pocket for the coronavirus test.
Austin-based Hormel Foods, which owns the Jennie-O plant in Willmar, has been testing employees, but de Jesus isn’t sure what the policy is for her employer, the cleaning company.
“I think it should be obligatory to be tested,” she said.
Hormel “encourages” returning employees to get tested for COVID-19, and as testing availability has increased, “we have been able to move more swiftly to encourage team members to get tested,” the company said in a statement to the Star Tribune.
The food company decided about a week ago to conduct mass testing at its turkey plants in Willmar and Melrose for all employees and third-party contractors who regularly work at the factories.
“Our company covered the cost,” a Hormel spokesman said.
JBS ‘reluctant to test’
Two-thirds of the workers at the JBS plant in Worthington were tested when the facility was idled two weeks ago, but that was at Gov. Tim Walz’s insistence.
“The governor wanted everyone in the plant to be tested,” said Kris Ehresmann, infectious disease director for the Minnesota Department of Health. “JBS was reluctant to test everyone. They had reservations.”
The Health Department ended up testing about 1,400 of the plant’s 2,200 workers, coordinating with local public health authorities and Sanford Health. Minnesota taxpayers will foot the bill.
Systematic testing of employees has not occurred at a similarly sized JBS pork plant in Marshalltown, Iowa, where at least dozens of workers have fallen ill from the virus. Ken Lyons, chairman of the Marshall County Board of Health, said last week he has not known the case count at the plant for three weeks.
JBS, which has put in place a long list of new safety measures in Worthington, did not respond to the Star Tribune’s questions about coronavirus testing.
Testing is “a point in time,” said Ehresmann, of the state Health Department. “All a negative test means is that today — at this point — you don’t have evidence of COVID-19.”
Employers must conduct continuous, rigorous screening of their workers in addition to giving them continued access to testing, she said.
Patchwork policies
The other companies with dominant meatpacking presence in the Upper Midwest are Smithfield and Tyson, and their testing of employees varies by location.
“I am not sure who has been testing and who has not, nor how they have been doing the testing,” said Sarah Little, a spokeswoman for the North American Meat Institute, a trade group for meatpackers.
The United Food and Commercial Workers union has called for daily testing of meatpacking workers, but that is some way off. Many plants are not testing workers at all.
Smithfield is trying to reopen its Sioux Falls, S.D., pork plant where more than 800 workers have tested positive, but any new testing is “on a voluntary basis,” the company said in a statement. The state of South Dakota is paying for the tests.
A Smithfield plant in Denison, Iowa, has been the scene of an outbreak and is running at reduced capacity because of absenteeism.
The mayor of Denison, Pamela Soseman, said last week that Smithfield “did not respond” when she asked the company to request rapid test kits from the state.
But on Friday afternoon she spoke with representatives from the company, and Smithfield workers are now being encouraged to sign up for testing at a drive-through site in town. Testing is not mandatory.
Smithfield said Friday in a statement to the Star Tribune that it has worked with the state of Iowa and local public health authorities “to make testing available for free to all Denison employees” of the company.
Tyson Foods, which has suffered outbreaks at several plants in Iowa, Nebraska and elsewhere, did not respond to a request for comment.
Silent USDA
Local news reports indicate workers are being tested in Dakota City, Neb., where a Tyson beef plant has been shut down, but not in Independence, Iowa, where Tyson has a dog-treats factory with an outbreak.
A spokeswoman for the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, which represents thousands of poultry-processing workers in the southeastern United States, said testing is not occurring “to our knowledge” at any of the plants where it represents workers. A least three workers have died from COVID-19 at a Tyson plant in Camilla, Ga., where the union represents 2,000 workers.
The USDA has given processors little instruction for reopening a plant that has been idled, including testing guidelines.
“The information we have gotten from the USDA has been very limited,” said Thom Petersen, Minnesota’s agriculture commissioner. “It has been very general — things we are already doing in Minnesota.”
Perdue, the U.S. secretary of agriculture, has told meat and poultry processors to use an interim guidance for the industry published last month by the CDC and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
That document’s only reference to testing says, “Facilities should consider the appropriate role for testing and workplace contact tracing of COVID-19-positive workers in a worksite risk assessment.”
The USDA did not respond to the Star Tribune’s questions about testing at meatpacking plants.
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