Protecting profit vs protecting workers: A union's effort to impact corporate safety culture

Pressing for safety and health changes in the workplace is at best difficult, but is particularly so when the work is hard, dangerous, fast-paced, and the workforce is made up largely of immigrant workers. They may or may not know their rights, are often intimidated and afraid of the "boss" and may be discouraged from speaking up about hazardous working conditions. This is the environment of a typical meatpacking plant where speed and production are the paramount concerns of management, with safety and health taking a back seat. This paper addresses efforts made by a union representing meatpacking workers to make a change in the way the industry operates a certain process ("it's always been done this way." ) that has been documented to put workers at risk of lacerations, amputations and traumatic injury. Workers, the local unions, safety and health committees and ultimately the government was engaged in the effort to address "culture" in an industry that values how many packages of hamburger meat leave the plant over how many workers remain whole and uninjured at the end of the work day.