CHARLESTON, W.Va. - As the number of COVID-19 cases in West Virginia jails skyrockets, advocates for incarcerated people are urging Gov. Jim Justice to follow recommendations in a new report to curb the spread.

As of December 1, more than 1,150 people serving time and correctional officers have contracted the virus, according to Lida Shepherd - program director with the American Friends Service Committee.

With regional jails at 35% over capacity, she said state officials should reduce pretrial detention and release anyone close to their parole date who isn't a threat to public safety. Those suggestions are in a study by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.

"An outbreak anywhere reduces our state's overall ability to get this virus under control," said Shepherd. "And so, that's why it's just critical that the governor really take action to prevent them - not just respond to when they happen, but to really prevent them through some of these recommendations."

The state Legislature had passed House Bill 2419 before the pandemic, which aims to reduce the number of people being held pretrial for low-level misdemeanor charges.

But Shepherd said she thinks, even with jails and surrounding communities becoming pandemic hotspots, the new law isn't really being applied.

Not using the new law creates what's known as "churn" in regional jails - where a lot of people are entering for short periods and then exiting, Shepherd said.

"In the midst of a pandemic, that obviously has some pretty dire consequences, as we are now seeing play out in some of our regional jails," said Shepherd. "With the virus being introduced not only necessarily by inmates, people who are coming into the system, but of course, by staff as well."

The report also recommends that people not be reincarcerated for minor, technical parole violations. Shepherd said not only would this help stop the spread of COVID, it could help restore lives and reunite families.

By Whitney Curry Wimbish for Sentient.
Broadcast version by Mike Moen for Minnesota News Connection reporting for the Sentient-Public News Service Collaboration

When Aster Abrahame injured her back at work a few years ago, the pain was so severe that she struggled to perform her job - processing pork loins at breakneck speeds at a JBS Foods meatpacking plant in Worthington, Minnesota. The company sent her to its doctor, who she says performed no examination or test, prescribed a painkiller and told her to report to work the next day. Abrahame's job is already among the most dangerous in the country. Now the Trump administration's U.S. Department of Agriculture is taking steps to remove regulatory protections and permit faster processing lines for pork and poultry companies.

The end goal is to allow meatpacking plants to set their own speeds, a spokesperson for the Department's Food Safety and Inspection Service told Sentient in an email.

"The rule for pork and poultry processing line speed will create [a] new maximum speed option but ultimately the decision for what line speed to utilize will be made by each individual plant," the spokesperson wrote. No new plants may obtain a waiver in the meantime, the spokesperson added, and extensions will only apply to those that have one.

Abrahame spent an excruciating, sleepless night after the company doctor sent her on her way, and in the morning went to her own physician before taking off work for a few weeks. She didn't qualify for workers' compensation and received no pay for the time off. The plant issued a strike against her attendance record, however, and Abrahame went back to work, even though she was still in pain.

"I didn't want to lose my job. After three weeks, I just decided, 'I have to go back to work,'" says Abrahame, 44, who has worked the processing line for 10 years despite the pain that shoots through her chest and shoulder. "I have kids, I have bills." Meatpacking and slaughterhouse workers, like Abrahame, are not only at risk of physical duress and injury, but also experience rates of depression that are four times higher than the national average.

The government's statement that "extensive research has confirmed no direct link between processing speeds and workplace injuries" is false, labor advocates say - and that the USDA's own data shows otherwise. A recent USDA study found a correlation between the speed at which workers process or butcher meat and their risk for musculoskeletal disorders.

Abrahame says she has seen plenty of injuries that should raise concerns about the Trump administration's deregulatory move here. "I see wrist injuries, shoulder injuries. Some people have back injuries. It's all the company workers - this is how we work here," says Abrahame, who is now a shop steward for her union with United Food and Commercial Workers Local 663, which represents 17,000 workers in meat packing and processing and other industries in Minnesota.

Removing Limits on Line Speeds

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins announced in March that the Food Safety and Inspection Service will extend waivers allowing pork and poultry producers to process meat at a faster pace than the previous time limits prescribed, and begin immediate rulemaking to codify these higher limits.

Worker advocates and union groups say it's important to understand that the government only regulates the speed at which animals are "eviscerated," a part of the processing where workers remove internal organs from carcasses.

Evisceration work is largely automated these days. Just two percent of employees at modern plants work the evisceration line, according to the National Chicken Council, with eviscerations capped at 140 birds per minute and 1,106 hogs per hour.

The government doesn't regulate the speed at which workers process meat by hand, which constitutes the rest of the processing to prepare meat for sale and runs more slowly.

The two are related, however, Debbie Berkowitz, practitioner fellow at the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor at Georgetown University tells Sentient.

The evisceration rate "sets the speeds in the rest of the plants to a degree," says Berkowitz, who is also a former chief of staff and senior policy advisor at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Berkowitz has extensively studied processing speeds and written about the danger of raising them, as well as about processors' safety.

She and others point to the USDA's research published in January on pork and poultry plants that shows workers at a higher risk for injury when they work faster, as Sentient previously reported. Researchers looked at musculoskeletal injury rates for workers at plants that had waivers to eviscerate animals faster than the regulatory limit. Six pork processors, which eviscerated at speeds greater than 1,106 animals per hour, and 15 large poultry plants whose waivers allowed them to increase evisceration speed by a quarter to 175 birds per minute.

Eighty-one percent of poultry processors and nearly half of pork processors were at high risk for injury, the researchers found. The risk was associated with the rate at which workers handled individual parts per minute, or what the government referred to as "piece rate."

Forty percent of poultry processor workers reported moderate to severe upper extremity work-related pain in the year before; 42 percent of pork processors workers reported severe to "upper extremity pain."

The numbers are "higher than I've ever seen in any kind of industry," Berkowitz says. "They're astronomical."

Researchers found that the relationship between evisceration speed and how fast workers hand-processed meat varied depending on the plant, but worker advocates say the bottom line is that workers are more likely to get hurt when they're forced to work faster.

A permanent rate increase means "Injuries will increase and it's going to be a lot worse," Berkowitz says.

Berkowitz and others say that in addition to sustaining injuries, workers who get hurt on the line fear speaking up because it could cost not only their job, but their ability to stay in the U.S. Meatpacking and poultry producers are disproportionately refugees and noncitizen immigrants, and "this administration has declared a war on immigrant workers even if they've been here a decade," Berkowitz says. "Workers are going to get scared to bring up any complaints at all."

That fear is true in many immigrant communities, and especially heightened for meat processors, says Julia Coburn, director of projects and strategic initiatives at Centro de los Derechos del Migrante, who said people still talk about major Immigration and Custom Enforcement raids, such as the 2008 Postville raid or the raids under the first Trump administration.

"A lot of the trust has been broken-or was never there," Coburn says. "Today we're seeing a lot of fear being heightened by what they're hearing in the news." After Trump's March 1 executive order declaring English the official language of the U.S., for example, Coburn said fear began to spread that it was illegal to speak Spanish in public.

Workers Continue to Push for Protection

Though the government puts a cap on the evisceration rates, workers and advocates said it's unclear what the actual speed particular plants are running. That information is treated as a trade secret, says Ruth Schultz, meatpacking director at Abrahame's union, UFCW Local 663.

Workers in Worthington, Minnesota are negotiating a new contract with JBS, pushing for the plant to post line speed standards for every line in each department, train workers to monitor lines and empower them to alert management when speeds are too high. So far, the company has said no, but the union won't budge. JBS did not respond to Sentient's request for comment.

As it stands now, the contract allows for one "walking steward" per shift to time lines throughout the day by counting the number of pieces of meat processed by thousands of workers, Shultz says. But according to Shultz, workers have seen supervisors turn down the speed of the conveyor belt when the steward walks by, then turn it back up after they're gone. That's one reason the union is committed to the proposal, Schultz says.

"The expectation that's there above all is that workers behave like machines...the ultimate priority is keeping the process running at absolute top speed and everything is secondary, including bodily function," says Coburn. "It's horrifying."


Whitney Curry Wimbish wrote this article for Sentient.


get more stories like this via email

As today begins National Farmworker Awareness Week, North Carolina boasts the sixth-largest number of farmworkers of any state.

More than 150,000 people in the Tar Heel State are farmworkers or dependents of them.

Quirina Vallejos, executive director of the North Carolina Farmworkers Project, said the issues facing farmworkers include exposure to pesticides, inadequate housing and wage theft. But Vallejos pointed out the most pressing problem remains helping farmworkers know and defend their rights.

"Even if the workers know what their rights are, it's very challenging for them to speak up for themselves, defend their own rights," Vallejos explained. "Because if they're undocumented, they're afraid of being reported to ICE, and I've heard of employers threatening that very thing in order to get people to do what they want."

Farmworkers in North Carolina help harvest numerous crops, including tobacco, cucumbers, apples and bell peppers. In 2022, the U.S. Department of Labor's National Agricultural Worker Survey found more than 40% of agricultural workers were not authorized to work in the U.S.

Vallejos argued strong enforcement of existing regulations would best help farmworkers. One sort of policy lawmakers in many states could initiate, Vallejos suggested, would be the passage of laws to protect them from extreme heat.

"Workers are out there sunrise to sunset. That's a long time to be out in the fields and not get any breaks, not have time in the shade," Vallejos contended. "Employers should be required to be educated on emergency response to heat stress and heat-induced illnesses because that would save lives."

Carolina consumers who wish to support farmworkers, Vallejos added, could try to purchase produce from companies with strong labor standards.


get more stories like this via email

Nationwide, it is estimated about one-third of Americans either adhere to Christian Nationalist ideals or sympathize with them.

Groups working for social justice in Washington state are organizing to counter what they see as a movement harmful to democracy.

Aaron Scott, author of "Bring Back Your People: Ten Ways Regular Folks Can Put a Dent in White Christian Nationalism," is the keynote speaker at this weekend's Peace and Justice Action Conference in Spokane.

It is estimated 16% of people in Washington support Christian Nationalist ideas and although it is hardly a majority, Scott said the movement should not be disregarded.

"We can't afford to say, 'Well, we're not going to really deal with that stuff, that's a side conversation,'" Scott explained. "Because clearly we are now in a moment where it is not a side conversation. It is the central conversation."

Scott noted white Christian Nationalist groups embed in rural areas, building churches and securing funds to win local elections. Their beliefs often appear as anti-immigrant and anti-LGBTQ. He pointed out the ideology thrives where voter suppression and disengagement are high and encouraged people to stay engaged in their communities.

Christian Nationalists want the U.S. to be declared a Christian nation, with laws based on their far-right values. Though the ideas can seem threatening, Scott stressed arguing with strangers is usually not an effective way to change someone's mind. Instead, he suggested having direct, thoughtful conversations within trusting relationships, reinforcing their values of honesty and compassion.

"You can do things like point to the way this person lives their lives and the values that you know they hold, and highlight, like, 'This does not seem aligned with this,'" Scott advised.

Scott, who also works with the Episcopal Church, emphasized the core of Christianity runs counter to the ideas of Christian Nationalism. He added many Christian groups recognize the movement provides cover for white supremacy and are concerned about the threat it may pose to their religious communities as well as democracy. Scott acknowledged it takes time and commitment to counter extreme ideologies.


get more stories like this via email