Disaster at Georgia Poultry Plant

On January 28, disaster struck for workers at a Gainesville, Georgia poultry plant. Roughly 130 employees at the Foundation Food Group, formerly Prime Pak Foods, were evacuated after a liquid nitrogen leak in the plant’s refrigeration system was discovered. 6 workers were killed, while 11 more were hospitalized. Out of the 11 hospitalized, 3 were said to be in critical condition.

The response to the incident has been a show of typical and expected bourgeois paternalism. The US Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board has said it will deploy a team of investigators to the scene. Meanwhile, a mere handful of news outlets, mostly local, have given press coverage to an event in which 6 people lost their lives. The lack of coverage on the risks workers across the US face daily, particularly during a global pandemic, is typical of the bourgeois press.

While the management at Foundation Food Group may act as if this disaster is an isolated incident, it is not. In Gainesville, which is called the poultry capital of the world, workers are not strangers to the health and safety risks common to the industry.

Since 2011 the plant has received numerous violations from the Occupation Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the US Department of Labor’s workplace safety regulatory body. In 2015, the plant was issued 12 violations, including issues relating to machinery safeguards. Only two years later, 2 employees lost fingers after they were caught in machinery. An infraction the plant received last year cited the company for failing to meet eye and face protection requirements.

It is clear that Foundation Food Group cares more about their profits than the health and safety of its workers – like every capitalist firm!

There is the risk of Covid‑19 infection as well. Poultry plant workers across the country, including those working at Foundation Food Group, are at higher risk of Covid‑19 infection due to the close-quarters nature of the work.

Nearly half, by some estimates, of the workers working in the meatpacking industry are migrant workers. Indeed, the Mexican government has stated that 2 of its citizens are among the 6 dead in Gainesville. Migrant workers frequently face additional hardships as well as lower wages and greater precarity compared to their coworkers who are citizens.

In the poultry plants of Gainesville, and across the United States, there is a dire need for the formation of a class union to combat the negligence of the owners and management as well as the exploitation workers face in every workplace, and to protect the health and safety of workers. The importance of workers acting concertedly for their interests cannot be understated. The unity of action of the workers in their class union, especially across workplaces and industries, creates the conditions in which the working class can both protect itself from the bosses’ negligence and, ultimately, liberate itself from capitalism’s contempt for human life.