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Law360 (November 16, 2020, 11:34 PM EST) -- The California Division of Occupational Safety and Health slapped a Smithfield Foods-owned meatpacking plant with more than $100,000 in fines for alleged COVID-19 safety violations, the largest citation issued to a meatpacking plant nationwide, according to the workers' union.
More than 315 workers at the Farmer John meatpacking plant in Vernon have contracted COVID-19 since March, the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union said in a statement Monday. The facility employs about 1,800 workers total, the union said.
Cal/OSHA hadn't announced the fine as of Monday night, and agency representatives didn't immediately return a request for comment. Smithfield confirmed Monday it had been hit with citations by the agency.
The union said it has been calling on the company to establish better safety measures, workplace protections and transparency.
"Information has been incomplete and safety measures insufficient," the union said in Monday's statement.
Specifically, CAL/OSHA's six-month investigation revealed that workers were exposed to the virus in several ways and that they weren't allowed to socially distance inside the plant, according to the statement. Smithfield also didn't provide training or instruction to employees on ways to stymy the spread nor did it properly investigate or notify employees of exposure to COVID-19, the union said.
And the company neglected to report three hospitalizations of workers tied to the virus, the union said.
The union had called for the immediate closure of the plant and a Cal/OSHA investigation following a spike of infections in May, according to the statement.
José Guzman, a worker at Farmer John, said in the statement that in the absence of leadership from Smithfield, "we have taken it upon ourselves to call for safer working conditions and an investigation from Cal/OSHA."
"They've never taken our health seriously," he said. "[W]e are disposable to them as long as their profits keep going up, and it's no surprise to see this many citations given."
Smithfield was fined $58,000 and its subcontractor CitiStaff Solutions Inc. was hit with its own $47,000 fine, according to the union.
In a lengthy statement issued Monday, Smithfield called the COVID-19 citations "perplexing" and vowed to appeal them. Cal/OSHA has taken the "surprising position" that every single worker who contracted COVID-19 got it while working without analyzing each case, Smithfield said. That's an "incomprehensible conclusion," it said.
"The agency's position completely rejects the clear evidence established by health experts that community spread exists," the company said.
Smithfield also took issue with Cal/OSHA's finding that the company should've reported an alleged COVID-19-related hospitalization on Feb. 14.
"This defies logic," the company said. "It was not until nearly two weeks after that the first non-travel related COVID-19 case in the United States was confirmed."
On top of that, Cal/OSHA's citations regarding the company's failure to provide masks and barriers and require social distancing stem from time periods when the state hadn't yet issued any meaningful guidance on COVID-19 mitigation measures, Smithfield said. Since then, the company has fully complied with safety regulations, it said.
Smithfield was also fined by the federal OSHA back in September. Those fines, which totaled just $13,500, stemmed from a South Dakota facility where almost 1,300 workers purportedly contracted the coronavirus. Four of those employees died, the agency said at the time.
John Grant, president of the union's local chapter representing the Vernon workers, said in Monday's statement that nothing Smithfield nor local Farmer John management has done has been in the interest of workers.
"The working conditions there have been horrific, and these citations show exactly what workers were exposed to every day they were on the job," he said.
CitiStaff representatives didn't immediately return a request for comment late Monday.
--Editing by Emily Kokoll.
For a reprint of this article, please contact reprints@law360.com.
