Advocacy groups call for humane work environment at Sanderson Farms in Bryan

About 20 people gathered outside of Sanderson Farms at sunrise on Monday to rally for workers’ rights within the poultry production facility as employees drove in for the first shift of the day. Some honked their car horns in support before crossing over into the private property.

Sanderson Farms is a poultry processing company headquartered in Laurel, Mississippi. Their Bryan location opened in 1997 and currently processes 1.3 million birds weekly. A group of demonstrators — including former Sanderson employees, the Bryan nonprofit Centro de Derechos Laborales (CDL), faith leaders, the Council for Minority Student Affairs and a representative from Oxfam America — called for humane work conditions and accountability by gathering in front of the plant and attempting to give a letter to the company, which will now be mailed.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration enforces general workplace standards for the poultry processing industry. According to demonstrators at the rally, Sanderson employees and workers rights activists’ sought an OSHA investigation into potential health and safety violations in late 2018.

Sanderson Farms uses a company physician center called Nova Medical Centers for its employees. According to CDL, Nova Medical Centers has misclassified the injuries of workers by marking them as non-work-related, forcing injured employees to take unpaid family medical leave if they cannot work from their occupational injuries.

Sanderson Farms representatives have declined to comment.

Nancy Plankey-Videla, a sociology professor at Texas A&M and a board member of CDL, said the rally was about the misuse of family medical leave and poor work safety without proper medical care by Sanderson Farms.

“What really concerns us right now is the ways in which they are misusing the Family and Medical Leave Act and not allowing workers to follow their doctor’s orders of having a restriction, and they’re misclassifying work injuries,” Plankey-Videla said. “It is a good paying job, but when you become injured and don’t receive [treatments] you could be disabled for the rest of your life, and you will not be able to do any job to support your family.”

Former employee of Sanderson Farms Hortensia Treje Rangel said she came to the rally to support the people who are still working inside the company. She was forced to quit her job at the company because of injuries to her hands she obtained on the job when the supervisors would not rotate her shifts on the processing line. Rangel said that after complaining to the company, her employers ignored her. She now serves as a volunteer with CDL in addition to her new job.

“That’s how I learned that I have rights and that I have the voice to say ‘Y’all need to stop,’” Rangel said. “This is my right to rotate. This is my right to have breaks. This is how I learn.”

The poultry processed at the facility is sprayed with peracetic acid and other chemicals on the production line to disinfect the chickens and reduce pathogens. Julissa Ramirez, a former employee of Sanderson Farms, was injured from these chemicals splashing into her eyes in addition to an injury to her left hand, which she said the company dismissed as a pre-existing condition. OSHA requires the company to provide personal protective equipment to employees.

“The chemicals that they use to disinfect the chicken splashed and hurt my eyes,” Ramirez said. “They burnt my eyes, and it caused a chemical infection, and because of that I have proof that I made a complaint and they told me that it had nothing to do with my work.”

She held a printed signature of the paperwork she filed with Nova Medical Centers. On June 26, 2018, she filed a complaint labelled as possible chemical exposure. The next day, Nova Medical Centers reclassified the same examination paperwork as a non-work related injury that was possibly an eye irritation or infection caused by the environment. The paperwork was her proof of what Sanderson Farms was doing, she said.

“From every injury that occurs, they disguise it by forcing us to take family medical leave act in order to be able to cover the labor injuries,” Ramirez said. “It’s a measure that they take in order to no longer be responsible and be able to cover the employee.”

After visiting Nova, she used her medical insurance and went to a clinic in College Station. Once the doctor could no longer treat her, they sent her to a specialist in Austin who told her she would need surgery. Ramirez never received the treatment because she could not afford it and was forced to leave her job due to her injuries.

“I’ve stopped working because my left hand hurts continually and the problems with my eyes persist,” Ramirez said.

Alex Galimberti, senior advocacy & collaborations advisor at Oxfam America, a nonprofit that aims to end injustice in poverty, said he travelled from Boston to show support for CDL and the Sanderson workers.

“They are paying company paid doctors to misclassify diagnoses of injuries, not properly reporting injuries that were caused in the workplace as they should be on OSHA log forms,” Galimberti said. “And unfortunately what we hear from the workers here, from the workers at the Sanderson plant, is that the problems could be preventable from repetitive stress injuries and also chemical exposure that workers are facing.”

Sanderson Farms declined to comment at this time.

First published at The Battalion.