Six more employees at the Smithfield Foods Inc. meat processing plant in Arnold tested positive for the novel coronavirus, bringing the total number of cases at the plant to 12.
According to United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 1776, one additional test result is pending. Union officials learned of the latest cases on Tuesday, Local 1776 President Wendell Young IV said Wednesday. Most have recovered, however.
Mr. Young could not say just how many are currently showing symptoms. Since the start of the pandemic, eight of the 12 workers who tested positive have returned to work. But one-third of the workforce remains absent with people out sick and others opting not to work, causing the plant to operate at a “much lower capacity,” Mr. Young said.
The plant has implemented protocol and guidelines suggested by state health officials in the last month, including deep cleaning the plant and practicing social distancing.
“There haven’t been any hospitalizations that we’re aware of, but we’re happy no one is on a ventilator,” Mr. Young said Wednesday morning. “I give the company credit for following CDC recommendations from even before the governor started sending out orders, so I’m not saying they aren’t doing what they should be doing. But we’re now at an 11% contraction rate. We’ve asked the company to close the plant and pay everyone until they can at least stop potential spread at the plant, and it remains open. But I get it, you can’t control what people do when they’re not at work.
“But if work is where people congregate, you have an obligation to stop the spread.” The rate of positive test results was “stopped dead in its tracks” when other plants closed recently, he said.
Local 1776 represents just over 100 people at the Arnold plant and about 35,000 workers throughout the state — including those at four plants that closed in the last month due to spread of the novel virus.
The JBS Beef slaughterhouse shut down its 1,400-employee facility in Souderton, Pa., last month but has since reopened; Cargill Meat Solutions, a 900-worker meat-packaging plant in Hazleton, Pa., remains closed after over 100 employees tested positive and a union official died last month; CTI Foods hamburger-grinding plant in King of Prussia and Empire Kosher Poultry Inc. in Mifflintown closed last month, too, but the current status of those plants was not immediately known.
Smithfield Foods closed its South Dakota pork processing plant last month until further notice after hundreds of employees there tested positive for the disease. A few internal departments within the plant have reopened, but the plant as a whole remains closed, a staff member confirmed. The company declined to say which departments had reopened.
As of Wednesday morning, nearly 650 workers in the union had tested positive and a total of seven union members have died from the coronavirus, Mr. Young said.
Members have a right not to come to work, he said.
“People have had rallies and they think it’s not serious,” Mr. Young said. “But I knew many of those seven who died and it’s been very difficult to deal with for our union.”
Lacretia Wimbley: lwimbley@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1510 or on Twitter @Wimbleyjourno.
First Published: May 6, 2020, 8:37 a.m.
Updated: May 6, 2020, 3:29 p.m.
