Feb. 9, 2023 www.investigatemidwest.org Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting
Meatpacking worker protection bill reintroduced in U.S. Senate
Meatpacking workers and their advocates have long pointed to the high speed of production as a contributing factor to injuries and COVID-19 spread. Because the meat needs to be processed at a high rate, workers are forced to stand shoulder-to-shoulder.
The issue has gained Congress’s attention. In 2021, U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, D-New Jersey, introduced the “Protecting America’s Meatpackers Act.” It never advanced beyond its introduction in the Senate.
But, last week, Book reintroduced the bill. It would bolster worker safety protections at meatpacking plants by increasing OSHA inspections focused on amputation risks, ergonomics, line speeds and bathroom breaks. It remains to be seen if this year’s version will fare better.
Organizations including the AFL-CIO, Farm Aid and some state-level farmers’ unions endorsed the legislation, but the list of supporters notably doesn’t include American Farm Bureau Federation or the meat industry’s largest lobbying organizations.
To read more about high speeds of production and their effect on workers, check out this story from 2021 about a plant in Oklahoma.
— Madison McVan, reporter
PAIN DENIED: At one of the country's largest meatpacking plants, workers say their injuries were ignored (published 2021) | Madison McVan, Investigate Midwest
Graphic of the Week: U.S. ag industry has increased its foreign investments in past decade, government data shows | Sky Chadde, Investigate Midwest
In particular, crop production companies have vastly increased their foreign holdings: from about $2 billion in 2011 to about $12 billion in 2021.
Column: Proposed independent contractor rule could turn the Big Poultry tournament system on its tail feathers | Dave Dickey
Dave Dickey writes in his latest column: "Company employees receive guaranteed wages and benefits like reimbursement of expenses, overtime, vacation, paid time off, pensions, and health insurance for doing the organization’s bidding. Independent contractors … well forget it. They get none of that."
Read more.
Newsroom news
Board member honored for contributions to Iowa journalism
At last week's Iowa Newspaper Association convention in Des Moines, Iowa, Investigate Midwest board member Lyle Muller (center and far left in photos) was awarded a Distinguished Service Award by INA for his contributions to Iowa journalism and the development of future journalists for the state.
Muller was Iowa Watch’s first full-time executive director-editor from May 2012 until retiring from that position in August 2019. He joined the Investigate Midwest board of directors in spring 2022 when Iowa Watch was acquired by Investigate Midwest.
Before joining IowaWatch, he held several reporting and editing positions during 25 years at The Gazette, (Cedar Rapids, IA), among them being editor of the Iowa City Gazette in 1999-2003 and The Gazette in 2009-12, but also leading investigative and special projects, and serving as a senior editor on a team of editors that directed coverage of an Iowa flooding disaster, which won The Gazette the Society of Professional Journalists’ national Sigma Delta Chi award for deadline reporting in 2008.
A 1992 Council for the Advancement of Science Writing national fellow, his focus as a reporter was on health, science and higher education.
He is the professional adviser for Grinnell College’s student-run Scarlet & Black newspaper; Iowa editor for PolitiFact; and a member of the Iowa High School Press Association Board of Directors. He is a former member of the Iowa Newspaper Foundation board of directors and was the reporting coach for The Daily Iowan’s Ethics and Politics Initiative journalism project.
He has taught political reporting and editing at the University of Iowa School of Journalism and Mass Communication as an adjunct faculty member and served on Pulitzer Prize juries that selected finalists for investigative reporting for 2017 and commentary for 2018. His reporting experience included working as a staff reporter at the Iowa City Press-Citizen, The Daily Iowan and in radio and television news. He is a University of Iowa graduate with a major in communication studies.
Other news
The following stories are a product of the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an editorially independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri School of Journalism in partnership with Report For America and funded by the Walton Family Foundation. Investigate Midwest is part of this network.
Pumping Mississippi River water west: solution or pipe dream? | The Gazette
One proposed solution to the Colorado River Basin’s water scarcity crisis has come up again and again: large-scale river diversions, including pumping Mississippi River water to the parched West. Studies and modern engineering have proven that such projects are possible — but multi-state pipelines would require decades of construction and billions of dollars, and face major political obstacles. Yet the idea’s persistence illustrates the growing desperation of Western states to dig themselves out of droughts.
This story is by The Gazette, a newspaper in Iowa.
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