JBS fined $15,000 by OSHA for failing to protect Greeley plant workers from COVID-19
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration will fine JBS USA more than $15,000 for failing to protect employees at its Greeley plant from COVID-19 after six workers died and nearly 300 were infected with the virus, the U.S. Department of Labor announced Friday evening.
A seventh person who worked at JBS’s corporate offices in Greeley also died from the coronavirus earlier this year.
OSHA cited the company for a violation of the “general duty clause,” saying the company failed to provide a safe workplace at the meatpacking plant. The $15,615 penalty proposed for JBS is the maximum allowed by law, according to the Department of Labor.
Brazil-based JBS, the world’s largest meat-processing company, posted record net revenue of $51.7 billion in 2019.
JBS USA sharply disputed the federal agency’s findings, saying in a statement Friday night that “the OSHA citation is entirely without merit.”
“It attempts to impose a standard that did not exist in March as we fought the pandemic with no guidance,” the company said. “When OSHA finally provided guidance in late April, one month after the beginning of the citation time period, our previously implemented preventive measures largely exceeded any of their recommendations.”
OSHA’s citation and penalty are based on a coronavirus-related inspection in May. Following that inspection, federal officials said, JBS also failed to provide injury and illness logs in a timely manner.
“Employers need to take appropriate actions to protect their workers from the coronavirus,” Amanda Kupper, OHSA’s Denver area director, said in a news release. “OSHA has meatpacking industry guidance and other resources to assist in worker protection.”
The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment still lists the JBS plant in Greeley as having an active COVID-19 outbreak, with 290 confirmed employee cases to date, 3 probable cases and the six reported deaths of plant employees.
But JBS, in its statement, noted the Greeley plant has only recorded 14 new cases in the past 3½ months, with no positive cases in nearly seven weeks.
The JBS outbreak peaked in late March, but a review of documents by The Denver Post found the virus already was entrenched at the plant by the time a serious effort was mounted in April by the company and Weld County health officials to protect workers there.
“JBS’s response to COVID was late and inadequate,” Kim Cordova, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 7, told The Post this summer. “That’s why there was such a detrimental impact on workers.”
According to OHSA, the company has 15 businesses days to comply with the citation and fine, seek an informal meeting with OSHA’s Denver director, or challenge the findings before the independent Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission.
In its statement, JBS said: “We have implemented hundreds of interventions to protect our workforce, including screening all employees prior to entering the facility, staggering start times and break times, requiring the use of masks and face shields, erecting physical barriers, installing UV germicidal air sanitation and plasma bipolar ionization technologies to neutralize potential viruses, and removing vulnerable populations from our facilities with full pay and benefits. …
“Contrary to the allegations in the citation, the Greeley facility is in full compliance with all recommended guidance and hazard abatements.”
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