Chapter 8

What kind of injuries do workers in meatpacking plants typically suffer?

• Typically workers suffer from minor to major lacerations to the skin.
• This is either self inflicted accidentally or inflicted by a near co-worker because of the tight lines they work in. These people cut meat all day long, which leaves a lot of room for injury when you take into consideration that they stand no more than a foot apart.
• Some reports even say that knives have been reflected off of machines and have flown at these workers. (all info found on p.173)

Why don't more workers complain about safety conditions in plants?

• workers don't complain about conditions because the companies have complete control over who is fired and who is not. They can fire you for the most silly reasons you can think and most workers depend on this job for survival, and reporting anything negative would put their security in danger.

what has been the impact of allowing plants to maintain their own injury logs?

• After plants were allowed to maintain their own logs they began to take advantage of the system and report the least amount of injuries possible.
  
• Plants would only record as many injuries as they felt necessary, which let to many lawsuits against the companies.
• OSHA reported only 160 injuries, while there were more than 1800. (p.180)