The US-owned Cargill refrigerator in High River, Alberta – a city about 40 miles south of Calgary with about 13,500 residents – was for the time the site of the largest COVID-19 outbreak in North America. , with 950 workers, almost half of the entire workforce, testing positive for the virus.
This outbreak caused the deaths of two workers, Benito Quesada and Hiep Bui, as well as Armando Sallegue, the father of a worker, who was visiting from the Philippines. Now, Cargill may be facing legal responsibility for risking the lives of its workers for profit.
Cargill, a company estimated to cost between $ 30 and $ 40 billion, operates Canada’s largest refrigerator facility. The company has posted net income of more than $ 13.5 billion over the past five years. Cargill’s facilities depend on the work of a largely immigrant workforce, whose work on the assembly line requires elbow to elbow contact.
The company is now under investigation by the Royal Mounted Canadian Police (RMCP) – the Canadian equivalent of the FBI – for criminal negligence after Quesada’s family filed a complaint. Quesada, 51, supported his wife and four children after emigrating from Mexico.
“I spent Christmas with one less person to hug,” said her sixteen-year-old daughter, Ariana, to CBC, Canada’s state broadcaster. “And all the executives and general managers, everyone at Cargill were able to spend Christmas with their loved ones. And I didn’t understand that. “
This is the country’s first criminal investigation into an outbreak of COVID in the workplace. Criminal investigations into workplace deaths in Canada are rare, according to University of Alberta law professor Eric Adams. “Unfortunately, there are many tragedies in the workplace, many deaths on the job, but it is not very common for you to be able to connect the dots in a criminal sense to a single guilty individual,” he said. Calgary Herald.
The law requires a “sharp and substantial” departure from reasonable conduct in order to bring criminal charges, which Adams says is a high standard to be achieved when it comes to the early days of the COVID outbreak, a period during which almost all workplaces were in disarray.
April 6, 2020, marked the first COVID case recorded by Cargill. On the same day, United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 401 brought the case to management’s attention and requested personal protective equipment (PPE) for all employees. UFCW requested financial assistance for the self-isolation of workers and the restriction of traffic flow in the factory. The union also launched the idea of closing the factory for two weeks.
On April 12, 250 Filipino residents of High River wrote a letter to the mayor asking that the factory be closed temporarily. The letter clearly communicated the anguish of his community, stating that “we, the workers and our families, are concerned and afraid of the possibility of bringing the virus home with us”.
After Cargill temporarily laid off half of its workforce, the Department of Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) carried out an inspection of the facility via Zoom. Alberta’s chief physician, Deena Hinshaw, and his agriculture minister, Devin Dreeshen, who supported Trump, attended the meeting. OHS concluded that the workplace was safe, as it was “reasonably practical for the employer” to do so.
Cargill held a telephone meeting with its employees on April 18 and told them it was safe to return to work. Management completely excluded UFCW 401 from this conversation. However, the site had already scheduled its own city hall for the next day, where employees expressed their concern about the workplace. Another UFCW telephone survey confirmed that 85% of employees were afraid to work.
Hiep became the worker’s first fatality on April 20, dying a few days after falling ill. After his death, Cargill finally agreed to close the factory for two weeks, but by this time the virus was ravaging the High River.
Hiep’s 25-year-old husband, Nga Nguyen, received no condolences from Cargill until the company received criticism for its lack of proper etiquette. Hiep worked 18 hours a day for Cargill for 23 years.
As a frustrated worker told CBC investigators who talked to a dozen employees about the situation inside the factory:
Honestly speaking, they don’t care about their employees. They are saying that they can replace people at any time. They do not care.
The unit reopened on May 4, despite union objections that it needed more time to assess occupational safety. The workers reported being pressured to work, even if they had symptoms of cold or flu. Quesada, who had contracted the virus while the factory refused to close, died three days later.
None of this prevented the Globe and Mail – Canadian Journal of Registration – since Cargill’s appointment as one of Canada’s top employers in 2020.
In addition to the criminal investigation, the provincial OHS is investigating the Cargill outbreak and another outbreak at the JBS Food plant in Brooks, Alberta. Alberta OHS can only set small fines for health and safety violations – a pittance for large companies like Cargill and JBS.
Cargill is also facing a class action lawsuit seeking compensation from friends and family of Cargill workers harmed by the spread of COVID on the premises. The suit alleges that Cargill failed to take reasonable precautions in protecting its employees from COVID-19.
Labor leaders want tough penalties. Michael Hughes of UFCW 401 said the outbreak exposed the “main limits to liability” under the current OH&S regime.
United Steelworkers director Steve Hunt of Western Canada agrees, arguing that COVID-19, without the proper safety protocols, is as dangerous to the workplace as operating heavy equipment:
Employers often plead guilty to negligence in death or personal injury in exchange for a fine. Killing workers should never be just a cost of doing business. Cargill is no exception.
Gil McGowan of the Alberta Labor Federation applauded the opening of the criminal investigation, expressing hope that this will usher in an era of accountability for large corporations:
When I heard that the RCMP had agreed to the family’s request to open a criminal investigation into the matter, I was moved for two reasons. First, he suggested that the family can see justice in this case. But also, I think that we may be opening a new chapter in terms of health and safety at work, a chapter that may mean that the health and safety of workers is given a higher priority. . . . I have no doubt that many employers across the province, and indeed across the country, have not done enough to keep their workers safe in the context of COVID.
Cargill’s criminal investigation is welcome news, but if we really want to hold corporate leaders who have blood on their hands accountable, we can’t just rely on the courts. We need more democratic workplaces, where employees are not forced to work for fear of death. Paid sick leave would be a good starting point, along with a review of the foreign temporary work program that treats immigrants as disposable labor.
The pandemic revealed the dire conditions of slaughterhouse workers. Of course, mistreatment of workers is not exclusive to Canada. The crisis that is unfolding today knows no national borders. The United States Congress recently announced that it was launching an inquiry into 270 deaths related to outbreaks in slaughterhouses, stressing that it is an international issue that requires an organized response. A patchwork of queries will not be enough.
The final villain in this story is no CEO or individual manager, although they certainly deserve their share of the blame. It is an economic system that prioritizes profit over humanity, forcing vulnerable workers to cramped facilities for the profit of their employer, while a highly infectious disease proliferates in the workplace.