id IAA08329; Tue, 10 Feb 1998 08:29:09 -0700 (MST) Date: Tue, 10 Feb 1998 10:17:38 -0500 From: "Robert J.S. Bob Ross" Subject: Poultry violations To: Labor List , Progressive Sociology Network , Campaign for Labor Rights >From New York Times February 10, 1998 Overtime Violations at Poultry Plants By STEVEN GREENHOUSE EW YORK -- Federal inspectors found that more than 60 percent of the nation's poultry processing plants violated overtime laws, the Labor Department announced on Monday. The inspectors, who examined 51 of the nation's 174 poultry plants, also found widespread safety problems, among them frequent back injuries that usually occurred when workers slipped on wet and greasy floors. Deputy Secretary of Labor Kathryn Higgins said that federal inspectors conducted the survey, first, to encourage the industry to improve working conditions and, second, to better understand conditions in plants populated by immigrant, low-wage workers. Federal regulators said the most frequent overtime violations involved the industry's undercounting of the hours worked by chicken catchers, who travel to farms to catch chickens and take them to the plants. These officials said 60 percent of the plants failed to pay the chicken catchers proper overtime, while 51 percent failed to pay workers properly for job-related tasks before and after work, like cleaning up and putting on safety equipment. Greg Denier, a spokesman for the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, said "that 60 percent are not in compliance with the wage-and-hour law shows that they're an outlaw industry." But officials with the National Broiler Council, the industry association, defended the poultry plants by asserting that the level of violations was high mainly because the Labor Department was enforcing the law differently from the way it previously had. David Wylie, a lawyer for the council, said that for 60 years federal officials had regarded chicken catchers as agricultural employees, who are not covered by federal overtime laws, rather than as industrial employees, who are covered. -- Robert J.S. Ross Professor and Chair Department of Sociology Clark University 950 Main Street Worcester, Massachusetts 01610 Voice: 508 793 7376 Fax: 508 793 8816 Webpage: http://www.clarku.edu/~rross