Playing Chicken with People: The Occupational Safety and Health Consequences of Throughput über Alles

Abstract

The political-economic and legal analysis of regulation in this article argues that the speed of work on disassembly lines in poultry processing plants, the fastest growing factory employment in the United States, is de facto regulated not by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the agency charged with protecting workers, but, perversely, by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In arrogating to itself the power to set line speeds in connection with its inspection of processed carcasses, the Department of Agriculture has one-sidedly promoted chicken oligopolies' interests by accommodating their drive to produce as much product as quickly and cheaply as possible (throughput über alles) and especially without regard to the incidence of repetitive stress disorders associated with high-speed machine-paced manual production. In contrast, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has failed either to assert its statutory authority over this vital determinant of workers' well-being or to persuade any administrative or judicial tribunal that it possesses such authority. Consequently, the article concludes, the health and safety of 200,000 low-paid and largely unorganized, female, and non-white workers continue to be held hostage to the self-valorization needs of capital and the state's cheap food policy.

Systematic review of qualitative literature on occupational health and safety legislation and regulatory enforcement planning and implementation

“…While it can be argued that employers and workers have some common ground, this review shows that it is also important not to underplay the relevance of power dynamics between labor and management. These influence who sets the agenda, what interests are given priority, and what is considered as OHS terrain (53). Articles in this review highlighted the tenuous conditions for OHS policy; for instance, regulations formed or removed in reaction to public accidents or fluctuating influence of labor depending on economic conditions.…”

Accounting for the ICI fire: partial connections between lay and expert knowledge

“…Since 1988 when Quinlan (1988: 205) reviewed this field and called for 'greater discourse between those seeking to explain occupational illness and those analysing the labour process', there has indeed been some useful analysis of OHS and the labour process (e.g., see Dwyer 1991;Gillespie 1990;Hall 1993;James 1987;Linder 1995;Willis 1994). Our point is not to deny the existence of such objects as management, unions and important variation in the labour process, but simply to point out that these objects are in part discursively constituted, that is, they are formed by associations and dissociations.…”

The Impact of Physical and Ergonomic Hazards on Poultry Abattoir Processing Workers: A Review

“…In the U.S., production line speeds of 70 birds per minute was increased to 120 birds per minute and the increase in line speed lead to greater productivity and profit, but not to safer and healthier poultry processing plants. In view of this, the industry still has one of the highest rates of occupational injuries and illness, at rates of more than twice all manufacturing sector averages [ 20 , 144 ]. On production line speeds, U.S. poultry workers stated [ 20 ]: “I came to Arkansas in 1995 and at the time we did 32 birds a minute.…”