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UFCW Stewards, UFCW Values, Workplace Safety & Health

Staying Informed and Updated on Your Plant’s Ammonia Safety Program

May 30, 2012

Several of our UFCW members who work in meatpacking, poultry and food processing plants spend their days working around refrigeration systems that use ammonia – a Highly Hazardous chemical. It is easy and important for stewards to find out if their company is complying with OSHA’s standards about how to operate safely with Highly Hazardous chemicals. The main standard is Process Safety Management (PSM). PSM gives workers and their representatives the right to ask for information about the ammonia system.

OSHA’s PSM Standard applies to most meat packing, poultry, and food processing plants. One PSM requirement is that the company must conduct an audit of their compliance every three years. Stewards can request to see the recommendations from the past two audits and find out what actions have been taken. By looking at the audit results and the follow-up stewards can see if the company is taking their PSM seriously.

“When I was sent out for training, I received a lot of information about PSM that I realized could be helpful to not only me, but also my co-workers at the plant,” said Jim Oldenburg, a steward at JBS and a member of UFCW Local 1473 in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

Even though every worker at the plant cannot receive specialized PSM training, workers do have the right to stay informed about their plant’s PSM program and come to their stewards with questions or concerns. To help his co-workers at the plant, Oldenburg submitted a list of PSM questions and responses to the company. These questions were developed by the Industrial Refrigeration Consortium at the University of Wisconsin – Madison.

“People look to me to help them and I’m doing everything that I can for them every day. Having this information available is just one of them,” said Oldenburg.

Here are the ten questions Jim submitted to management. According to the PSM standard your company must respond adequately to your concerns. Their responses to these questions can give you a sense of the condition of your plant’s ammonia safety program. If you need help evaluating the company’s response you can email the UFCW Health and Safety Representative for Process Safety Management at bthielen@ufcw.org.

1. When was our last compliance audit?

2. Can you show me the closeout of recommendations from the last compliance audit?

3.  Can you provide me a copy of the most recent incident report and documentation that shows how we closed out recommendations/from the incident report?

4.  When was our last Process Hazard Analysis (PHA) conducted and can you show me documentation that closes out the recommendations from the last PHA?

5. How often do we certify our plant’s written operating procedures for the covered process?

6.   What training program do we have for our operators and what are the means used to verify they have understood the training?

7.   How often do we do refresher training?

8.       Based on our plant’s mechanical integrity program, what is the next piece of equipment scheduled for retirement and when is it scheduled to come out of service?

9.  What criteria do we use to evaluate contractors that work on our covered process?

10.  What was the last change made to our system and can you show me the documentation for that change?

 

UFCW Stewards

Stewards April 2012

Apr 11, 2012

 

For UFCW members who work on the line in the food processing or meat packing industries, you know that the clock can be your best friend or your worst enemy – especially for workers who work in plants that use “gang time” to determine how much workers will be paid. When your plant uses gang time, compensable time begins when the first piece arrives at the beginning of the line and ends when the last leaves the beginning of the line. But often, workers on subsequent parts of the line end up working longer because equipment failures or USDA inspections slow the line down.

When it comes to your paycheck, every second counts. As stewards, we play an important role in plants where gang time is a factor. It is critical that we monitor the work day clock to ensure that our co-workers are paid properly for the work they do. Making sure the company doesn’t steal our time is part of the steward’s job: it protects workers’ rights and makes sure the company follows the contract we all negotiated and agreed to.

Connie Kimbe is a steward at the Tyson beef plant in Sioux City, Iowa and member of UFCW Local 222. She started at the plant in 1982, and has been a steward since 1987. Even though she’s in her seventies, Kimbe has not retired because of the commitment she feels to her co-workers. “I enjoy helping the people and being involved. Even well into my seventies I like to be a part of things and I’m enjoying it.”

As a steward, Kimbe keeps track of the time workers spend on the production line. “I have a stopwatch and I keep time from when they bring in the cattle, until they get all the way to the coolers. There are about ten critical parts in the line where work is likely to stop, or to be slowed, so I keep track of the minutes and seconds it takes to do each job,” Kimbe says.  “If any overtime happens after eight hours, I make sure to record it. Sometimes the company tries to get away with it, but everyone needs to be paid properly – that’s in our union contract, but more importantly, it’s also just the right thing to do for the people.”

In order to be a better steward and advocate to her workers, Kimbe keeps documentation on all the time logs for the production line. She also makes several copies to give to the general foreman, union representative, human resources, and one to keep for herself. Once paychecks come out a week later, she follows up to ensure that all time worked shows up in the paychecks.  If there is a problem, she is armed with the records and documentation to address the company and resolve the issue.

The production line in meat packing and production plants can stop for myriad reasons. In some cases it is an equipment malfunction. “We have an old plant,” Kimbe says, “so equipment breaking down is a factor for us sometimes.” Most of the time work is stopped so the USDA can perform inspections and make sure there’s no contamination. “The inspectors are there for the public’s safety, and we want the public to be safe. But the inspectors’ time shouldn’t negatively affect workers’ time,” Kimbe says.

Having a union on the job ensures that workers have decent hours and receive fair wages for those hours. If work in the production line stops, it is important that stewards accurately track and document it so that our co-workers get paid for the time they worked, and receive what is promised in their contracts. As stewards we cannot let the company intimidate us or keep our co-workers from fair treatment. It is our responsibility to serve as advocates for workers in terms of overtime and fair payment. Stewards can take a lot of pride in the roles we play in the food processing and meat packing industries because we are protecting our co-workers’ contracted rights and way of life.

 

UFCW Stewards

Globalization Brings New Challenges to Meat Workers All Over the World

Feb 11, 2012

 

Early in November of 2011, the UFCW hosted the IUF Global Meat Conference in Omaha, Nebraska. The IUF is a global union of meat and food workers

The global meat market is an industry worth hundreds of billions of dollars, and it is currently dominated by a few companies whose power and reach are growing year after year. With the consolidation of these companies, workers in meat plants face both local and global challenges. We are all familiar with local challenges: inadequate crewing at higher line speeds, disregard for ergonomics and safety, improper handling of hazardous materials like ammonia, wage and benefits cuts, etc.

Globalization brings its own set of challenges. As companies compete in global markets, they devise new systems and strategies to increase profits and reduce costs. These systems are often designed in corporate offices, far away from the plants. Engineers arrive at plants with blueprints and equipment; they install new machines and systems, but their involvement stops once the installation is done.

“Come Friday at 3:30 in the afternoon, these engineers are gone,” says Dan Riesner, a UFCW steward from Local 222 who works a combined job at the Gelita plant in Iowa. “When management comes back and does its inspection tour on Monday morning, they see that things are working, but they don’t really understand the amount of effort and the number of people it took to keep things running during the weekend, once the engineers left. There is no support and no follow-through. They leave us holding the bag and these changes have a very negative effect on job performance.”

Unionized workers in the U.S. have the protection of good contracts and government agencies such as the NLRB, but workers in other countries have to deal with indifferent governments and abusive managers. When global companies promote these managers and relocate them for new positions in the U.S., our rights are in jeopardy. These managers are used to abusing workers and ignoring safety concerns. Not only that, they are used to getting away with it. So once they are relocated to our plants, they will try to impose their practices on our brothers and sisters.

But in a global market information and opportunities flow both ways. As Dan explains, “when workers from other countries reach our plants, we have the opportunity to educate them and share the values of our own labor movement. Once they experience the difference in working conditions in our plants, we should encourage them to share with their own families abroad. If companies are going to import their abusive practices, we should be able to export our values.”