Policy Impacts on Food Industry Workers
Author: Inga Suneson
“Economic models suggest that “contagious presenteeism” behavior—working sick with a contagious disease—decreases when employees gain access to paid sick leave, as they are more likely to stay home."
(Pichler et al., 2020)
Video (7:33m)
Our most essential workers in the food system - growers and factory workers - are the most at risk.
Farm Worker Risks
As of December 6, 2020 Purdue University estimates more than 265,000 agricultural workers have tested positive for COVID-19 nationwide but this is likely an understatement since it excludes workers classed as contractors or temporary labor. (Purdue Food and Agriculture Vulnerability Index, n.d.)
To see the full table, visit Purdue's Food and Vulnerability Index
There is no “comprehensive national or industry-wide testing or reporting of positive COVID cases among agricultural workers is being systematically conducted” (Purdue Food and Agriculture Vulnerability Index, n.d.)
The disruption in the food distribution chain has affected staffing requirements, in some cases leading to a surplus of workers, which means testing positive could result in job loss, discouraging testing and treatment behavior. (Gupta & Fawcett, 2020)
Workers often work and sleep in close proximity to one another, but move frequently for different seasonal crops making spreading COVID-19 easy but contact tracing difficult. (Reiley & Reinhard, 2020)
Farm workers are low income, with 33% having a family income below poverty. (Hernandez & Gabbard, 2018, 36)
Food Processing Risks
Food processing factories have been a major source of large outbreaks across the country, often resulting in dozens if not hundreds of infections each. (Gordon et al., 2020)
For more on how workplace infections spread in the community, see Agricultural Communities.
Many harmful policies have been enacted that put workers at greater risk including states “preempt[ing] municipalities from enacting their own paid leave policies.” At least one plant offering workers a ‘responsibility bonus’ of $500 to workers who clocked in every day in April. This incentivizes workers to show up to work sick, known as "contagious presenteeism". (Gordon et al., 2020)
The federal paid leave policy passed in March applies to employers with less than 500 employees, while many food processing plants have thousands of employees, making them ineligible for paid leave. (Gordon et al., 2020)
Federal regulatory agencies like the OSHA and the Department of Agriculture have allowed or not actively discouraged dangerous policies like the speeding up of the line and placing workers closer together increasing their COVID-19 risk. (Gordon et al., 2020)
Federal Paid Leave Policy: About the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA)
A law passed by Congress and signed into law on March 18, 2020 and officially went into effect April 1, 2020 allowing paid leave for coronavirus-related reasons such as quarantine, symptoms, or COVID-19 based closures. (United States Department of Labor, 2020)
Allows full time employees to take up to 80 hours (two weeks) of sick time at full pay.
Allows full time employees to take up to 10 additional weeks of family leave at two-thirds of pay, designated for parents to take care of children due to closures of schools and childcare.
Extended unemployment benefits
Only covers employers who have 500 or fewer employees. Study estimates “roughly half of the workforce is covered by the bill.” (Pichler et al., 2020)
FFCRA makes an exception for "health care providers" in order to keep health care facilities fully staffed. (United States Department of Labor, 2020)
It is estimated that 89% of the employers exempt from FFCRA offer paid leave, so it benefits primarily “workers in smaller firms without paid sick leave pre-FFCRA” (Pichler et al., 2020)
Expires December 31, 2020
Analysis of FFCRA March 8-May 11
From "COVID-19 Emergency Sick Leave Has Helped Flatten The Curve In The United States"
Study period was March 8 - May 11
Compared cases at the state level of states with sick pay laws prior to COVID-19 as the control to states where employees first gained sick pay through FFCRA as the treatment group
Results showed statistically significant decreases in the number of newly reported COVID-19 cases in states where workers earned paid sick leave through the FFCRA.
While the effect size differed by state, there were on average 400 fewer reported cases per day in the treatment group states, or “about 1 new case per day for every 1300 workers who gained the right to take up to two weeks of paid sick leave due to COVID-19.”
This finding is consistent with previous data on reducing “contagious presenteeism” behavior—working sick with a contagious disease — previously shown to causally decrease influenza spread by 11%.
Barriers with FFCRA
Although FFCRA was an improvement for many workers without paid sick leave, there are several problems with the law and its enforcement preventing it from being as effective as possible at preventing the spread of COVID-19.
As mentioned previously, the FFCRA only covers workplaces with 500 or fewer employees.
It only covers employees. Temporary or contract workers are not included. A large percentage of farm workers are classed as contract or temporary workers. (Purdue Food and Agriculture Vulnerability Index, n.d.)
FFCRA only allows up to two weeks of paid sick leave but if an employee quarantines for two weeks as a precaution, they are unable to take any more leave which could risk them coming to work sick at a later date. (Pichler et al., 2020)
Prior to a lawsuit, the Department of Labor’s exemption for “health care providers” was so broad that it could be applied to custodians, cafeteria workers, and even gift shop workers in a healthcare facility. It has since been specified that healthcare providers are only those workers defined as such under the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA), not merely all employees of a healthcare system. (United States Department of Labor, 2020)
Corporate COVID-19 Sick Leave Policies
Many corporations exempt from FFCRA with more than 500 employees have instituted some form of paid sick leave policy in response to COVID-19. Many of those corporations are fast food or casual dining chains.
While it is good news that some have given employees paid leave, the communication, implementation, and accessibility of these policies varies widely even within single corporations based on things like whether a branch is corporate-owned or a franchise location. (Miller et al., 2020) This is especially concerning given that the CDC reports “1 in 5 food service workers have reported working at least once in the previous year while sick with vomiting or diarrhea” due to fear of job loss, despite restaurants being a large source of norovirus and other food-borne illnesses. (United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2014)
It is not enough to simply have policy on record, it must also be usable without fear of repercussions. (NYC.gov, 2020)
Sick leave isn't the only policy impacting workers, other policies from regulatory agencies like OSHA, the Department of Labor and the USDA impact food workers' COVID-19 risk as well as other risks for injuries.
Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)
OSHA has only provided unenforceable “guidance” to many sectors, including agriculture. This leaves many protective actions like PPE up to the discretion of employers. (Reiley & Reinhard, 2020)
In the case of small farms, OSHA will only inspect places with 10 or more employees which often does not apply to agricultural workers who are classed as temporary or contract workers. (National Center for Farmworker Health, Inc., 2020)
OSHA only recently revised their guidance which now requires employers to track employees' COVID-19 illness that “cause the employee to seek medical care or miss one or more days of work and that may have been contracted at work” (National Center for Farmworker Health, Inc., 2020)
U.S. Department of Labor
The Department of Labor’s broad interpretation of the FFCRA’s health care provider exemption prevented other health care system employees such as janitors and cafeteria workers from taking FFCRA-related sick leave until challenged in a lawsuit. (United States Department of Labor, 2020)
Other exemptions from the FFCRA leave out agricultural workers on the basis of their not being "employees" or employees of corporations with more than 500 employees like fast food chains and food processing plants. (United States Department of Labor, 2020)
U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)
The USDA gave permission for 11 food processing plants to speed up the lines putting workers at higher risk. Increased line speeds increases ”the risk of repetitive strain injuries like carpal tunnel syndrome” and “laceration injuries to workers.” (Arnsdorf, 2019)
The USDA also “scrapped a requirement for employers to submit their injury logs.” (Arnsdorf, 2019)
Future Policy Recommendations
The ultimate goal should be for the United States to offer paid sick leave to all workers.
In the meantime, some policies that could stem the spread of COVID-19 could be:
Extend the FFCRA past December 31, 2020.
Expand the FFCRA to all workers including temporary and contract workers.
Expand the FFCRA's sick leave past just two weeks.
Expand OSHA's jurisdiction to cover more types of workers like temporary and contract workers.
Makes OSHA's coronavirus guidelines enforceable rules that can penalize employers.
Include health care providers and workers at employers with more than 500 employees in FFCRA.
Conclusion
Food industry workers are some of the most vital to our nation, but are often unprotected by health and safety policies. This has never been more apparent than during the COVID-19 pandemic. Food workers keep us fed, but they are often vulnerable due to low income, their immigration status, and their workplaces. By examining the policies in place around workplace health and safety it is apparent that the spread of COVID-19 among food workers is not due to carelessness by workers but because of the systems and policies that surround them.
Given the data on the FFCRA, it is clear that a nation-wide sick leave policy has made a positive impact in the spread of COVID-19 despite the FFCRA’s many limitations. This policy should lay the groundwork for more comprehensive paid leave policies that include all workers, including those classed as temporary or contract workers.
For food workers, comprehensive paid leave would have repercussions in many areas of public health such as a reduction in influenza and food borne illness. If left to employers or even states, it will almost certainly be inequitably distributed (as it is currently), it may not be communicated well, and workers may avoid using paid leave for fear of retribution. Like other occupational health policies, paid leave should be rigorously enforced to protect the health of workers, their communities, and the public.
CItations
Purdue Food and Agriculture Vulnerability Index. (n.d.). Purdue University Agricultural Economics. Retrieved 11 21, 2020, from https://ag.purdue.edu/agecon/Pages/FoodandAgVulnerabilityIndex.aspx?_ga=2.49471334.1159720487.1600111458-250602208.1598985334
Gupta, A., & Fawcett, M. (2020, June 22). Undocumented Farmworkers Are Refusing Covid Tests for Fear of Losing Their Jobs. Workday Minnesota. Retrieved November 21, 2020, from https://workdayminnesota.org/undocumented-farmworkers-are-refusing-covid-tests-for-fear-of-losing-their-jobs/
Reiley, L., & Reinhard, B. (2020, September 24). Virus’s unseen hot zone: The American farm. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/09/24/seasonal-farm-workers-coronavirus
Hernandez, T., & Gabbard, S. (2018). Findings from the National Agricultural Workers Survey (NAWS) 2015-2016: A Demographic and Employment Profile of United States Farmworkers. U.S. Department of Labor. https://www.doleta.gov/naws/research/docs/NAWS_Research_Report_13.pdf
Gordon, C., Halbert, H., & Dresser, L. (2020, April 20). Weak labor protections have put Midwestern food processing workers at risk for coronavirus. Economic Policy Institute. Retrieved November 21, 2020, from https://www.epi.org/blog/weak-labor-protections-have-put-midwestern-food-processing-workers-at-risk-for-coronavirus/
United States Department of Labor. (2020). Families First Coronavirus Response Act: Employee Paid Leave Rights. U.S. Department of Labor. Retrieved November 21, 2020, from dol.gov/agencies/whd/pandemic/ffcra-employee-paid-leave
Pichler, S., Wen, K., & Ziebarth, N. R. (2020, October 15). COVID-19 Emergency Sick Leave Has Helped Flatten The Curve In The United States. Health Affairs. https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/10.1377/hlthaff.2020.00863
United States Department of Labor. (2020, September 11). U.S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR REVISES REGULATIONS TO CLARIFY PAID LEAVE REQUIREMENTS UNDER THE FAMILIES FIRST CORONAVIRUS RESPONSE ACT. U.S. Department of Labor. Retrieved November 21, 2020, from https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/whd/whd20200911-2
Miller, R., Schulte, B., & Swenson, H. (2020, May 5). Which Companies Still Aren’t Offering Paid Sick Days?: Tracking the Corporate Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic. New America. Retrieved November 21, 2020, from https://www.newamerica.org/better-life-lab/reports/which-companies-still-arent-offering-paid-sick-days/
United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2014, June 3). Norovirus is the leading cause of disease outbreaks from contaminated food in the U.S. CDC Newsroom. Retrieved November 11, 2020, from https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2014/p0603-norovirus.html#:~:text=However%2C%201%20in%205%20food,significant%20factors%20in%20their%20decision.
NYC.gov. (2020, February 26). Mayor de Blasio and Commissioner Salas Announce Paid Sick Leave Settlement with Chipotle. The Official Website of New York City. Retrieved November 21, 2020, from https://www1.nyc.gov/office-of-the-mayor/news/095-20/mayor-de-blasio-commissioner-salas-paid-sick-leave-settlement-chipotle
National Center for Farmworker Health, Inc. (2020, October 19). COVID-19 in Rural America: Impact on Farms & Agricultural Workers. National Center for Farmworker Health, Inc. Retrieved November 11, 2020, from http://www.ncfh.org/msaws-and-covid-19.html
Arnsdorf, I. (2019, October 3). Trump’s USDA Is Letting Factories With Troubling Safety Records Slaughter Chickens Even Faster. ProPublica. Retrieved November 21, 2020, from https://www.propublica.org/article/line-speed-waivers-trump-usda-is-letting-factories-with-troubling-safety-records-slaughter-chickens-even-faster