April 22, 2006
Associated Press
Sharon Cohen

OMAHA, Neb. -- With a bill of rights and a state watchdog, Nebraska has taken extra steps to monitor working conditions in the meatpacking industry.

But does it matter? It depends on who you ask.

Jose Santos, Nebraska's meatpacking industry worker rights coordinator, says the work environment has improved in the nearly six years since the state established a list of employee rights that companies are supposed to post on the walls of their plants.

"I'm not naive to think that everything is hunky-dory," Santos says. "Things don't change overnight." But, he adds, "people have become more vocal. They're not afraid to stand up and speak out. ... They're ready to challenge the system."

Santos took on this post after then-Gov. Mike Johanns -- now U.S. agriculture secretary -- established basic guidelines that cover about 25,000 people who work in some 100 meat and poultry plants in the state.

The list includes work conditions protected by law such as safety, compensation and the right to organize (the No. 1 item). Nebraska is a right-to-work state, meaning employees don't have to join unions. But the United Food and Commercial Workers Union has made some inroads in organizing workers here.

The bill of rights followed years of reports of wide-ranging problems faced by a growing numbers of Hispanics moving into the meatpacking industry in Nebraska. Santos says they ranged from squalid housing to work-related complaints such as inadequate bathrooms, lunchrooms and break periods.

Santos is on the road constantly, visiting plants -- he conducted 61 inspections last year -- meeting with workers, company officials and coordinating with federal agencies.

Santos says in recent years, many complaints fall into the "human relations" category, and that can range from accusations of verbally abusive bosses to workers who don't understand that they can't take days off whenever they choose.

Donna McDonald, president of the union's Local 271, says the bill of rights has made a difference. "It's not toothless," she says. "It has given the workers a lot of courage."

But Milo Mumgaard, executive director of the Nebraska Appleseed Center for Law in the Public Interest, says his organization conducted a survey last summer and concluded the bill had little impact.

"The general message coming from workers was ... next to nothing had changed" in terms of their daily experiences, the risks they faced, and the injuries they saw around them, Mumgaard says.

He said the company officials interviewed did see positive changes, including declining rates of injuries on the assembly line, but tended to attribute that to their efforts, not state guidelines.

"We've got a long ways to go," he says, "in terms of improving conditions as well as breathing some life into these rights."