Food Inequalities by Allen Tennille Nicole;

Author:Allen, Tennille Nicole;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ABC-CLIO, LLC
Published: 2021-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

RACE AND GENDER DISCRIMINATION IN THE PROCESSING INDUSTRY

As shown earlier, marginalized farmers experience racism and sexism in their dealings with processing companies. This is also the case for processing workers. Racial, ethnic, and gender discrimination is common in food processing and production. White people are 55 percent of workers in food processing and earn slightly more than $40,000. Food processors who are people of color earn $24,400. Among poultry-, meat-, and fish-processing workers, white people have a median income of $23,645, compared with Asian Americans’ $24,285, Latinx people’s $21,386, and African Americans’ $17,949. Similar patterns of whites outearning people of color are found in other food-processing jobs.

A series of recent lawsuits further illuminate some of the discrimination in this sector. California’s Marquez Brothers, a producer of Mexican foods, settled a discrimination suit for $2 million in 2019 after allegations that it reserved so-called unskilled positions for Latinx workers. The settlement came two years after the EEOC filed suit because of numerous cases of non-Latinx job applicants being denied work in favor of Latinx applicants with fewer qualifications. In conjunction with the financial damages, Marquez Brothers agreed to hire an external monitor, set hiring goals, and adopt plans for hiring transparency and diversity, discrimination reporting, and antidiscrimination training, a common set of remedies in such cases.

Tyson Foods, one of the world’s largest food processors, agreed to pay $1.6 million in back wages and benefits to nearly 6,000 job applicants who were rejected employment at plants across three states between 2007 and 2010. This 2019 settlement with the U.S. Department of Labor centered on allegations of systemic hiring discrimination. Though Tyson did not admit to any liability, in addition to the financial settlement, the company agreed to hire some of the applicants as well as change its hiring and training processes.

In 2018 Illinois-based Koch Foods, one of the world’s largest poultry processors, settled a 2011 class action lawsuit brought by Latinx workers. The settlement included EEOC monitoring; implementation of antidiscrimination policies, training, and a 24-hour bilingual hotline for reporting discrimination; and $3.75 million in financial relief for the victims of widespread patterns of sexual harassment, racial and ethnic discrimination, and physical abuse, and for victims of retaliation against Latinx employees of the company’s Morton, Mississippi, chicken-processing operations.

Soon after the $3.75 million Koch Foods settlement was announced, Koch’s seven Mississippi plants were raided by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and nearly 700 workers were arrested at Koch’s seven plants there. Threats and actual calls to ICE are common practices used by employers to enforce control over and instill fear in workers who would otherwise demand better labor conditions. Union representatives and workers’ rights advocates cite examples of ICE raids occurring in the days after wage, health, or safety violations are reported. After an employee was killed in an Ohio meatpacking plant, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) fined his employer more than $200,000 for three separate instances of lack of safety guards that resulted in the employee’s death. A week later, there was an ICE raid that led to the arrests of 140 workers.

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