United Farm Workers threatens to boycott Foster Farms in California due to COVID-19 outbreak

United Farm Workers Monday raised the specter of a boycott of Foster Farms in Merced County, a day before the huge chicken processing plant is scheduled to shut down amid a coronavirus outbreak that health officials say has claimed the lives of at least eight workers.

Union representatives said the company failed its employees and failed to comply with health department orders. They set forth a series of demands for the company and threatened a boycott of their products among workers and activists if those demands were not met. The union did not set a deadline, however, saying the situation was “dynamic.”

“We are coming in good faith to Foster Farms, and we are hoping Foster Farms will come back to us in good faith,” said Mandeep Singh, an organizer with the Jakara Movement.

“The county has not been able to enforce their own orders, so it’s for that reason we decided to go to the public,” he added.

The Merced County Health Department initially ordered the chicken-processing plant to close on Aug. 27 following multiple COVID-19 outbreaks and violations of department orders. They then delayed the order twice. On Saturday, the health department determined the plant would be permitted to operate until Tuesday night. It will remain closed until at least Monday, Sept. 7.

The farmworker union represents about 2,000 of over 3,000 Foster Farms Livingston employees. They are in negotiations to renew a contract with Foster Farms.

Foster Farms confirmed in a statement released Saturday the main plant, where about 1,400 employees work, would close for six days to allow for deep cleaning and employee testing.

According to the statement, the company will also complete two rounds of coronavirus testing for employees in the other processing facilities that did not undergo outbreaks, which will remain open per the county order.

Testing will come at no cost to employees. Ira Brill, vice president of communications at Foster Farms, told The Bee in a statement workers who are tested twice this week would be paid each day the facility is closed.

At least 392 employees have tested positive for COVID-19 at the plant, and at least eight workers have died in Merced County.

However, there was some confusion about the total number of deaths linked to the plant. The UFW shared a flyer they said was posted at the Foster Farms facility in Livingston that listed the total number of deaths at all Foster Farms facilities at nine. The company could not immediately be reached Monday for comment on the discrepancy.

Union demands COVID-19 contract with Foster Farms

During the online news conference Monday, Marta Vera, a longtime employee of Foster Farms who lost her husband to COVID-19, said the company did not care for its workers. He worked for Foster Farms for 27 years as a truck driver.

“How many more people do they expect to die before they do something, before the company takes action, before the company protects its workers?” she asked in Spanish. “Can somebody tell me that?”

Among their demands, the union has asked Foster Farms to shut down its entire Livingston facility; test all workers and produce public results on an ongoing basis; provide paid leave while the plant is closed and quarantine pay to those sick with the virus, and provide hazard pay and free masks and face shields.

The union also demanded the company sign a contract with them that includes a health and safety committee to protect all workers.

“This is literally the bare minimum,” said Andy Levine, an organizer with Faith in the Valley. “Workers are asking for their employer to follow the law.”

Researchers at the Community and Labor Center at UC Merced said the plant’s recent COVID-19 outbreak is part of a broader trend of poor health and safety enforcement among meat processing plants in the central San Joaquin Valley.

The Central Valley, home to nearly half of California’s animal slaughtering and processing industry jobs, had the highest rate of unplanned inspections and among the lowest rates of violations with Cal-OSHA, according to a new policy brief by the Community and Labor Center at UC Merced.

The Valley averaged 1.3 violations per inspection, compared to about four in Los Angeles.

That suggests a lack of enforcement, according to UC Merced professor Edward Flores, because most inspections in the Valley occur on a rolling basis when the agency receives complaints or learns of accidents. In other words, the company is rarely punished but continues to produce high numbers of accidents, complaints, and whistleblower investigations, Flores said.

“So it’s not surprising to see that there’s a pattern of health and safety non-compliance in this plant during the COVID period when before COVID there were already indications there might have been a lack of agency enforcement and a lack of business compliance,” he said.