010655 UFCW Comments on Industry Wage & Hour Laws

Washington - The following is a statement by United Food and Commercial Workers President Doug Dority:

I am pleased to have had the opportunity today to meet with U.S. Secretary of Labor, Elaine Chao, to discuss the importance of wage and hour protections for poultry workers.

Poultry workers deserve to be paid for the work that they do.

Chicken is the meal of choice for millions of Americans every day. But it comes at an enormous price for poultry workers.

250,000 workers go to work every day on the poultry processing line, earning poverty level wages and suffering some of the highest injury rates in manufacturing.

It is long overdue that the poultry industry pay these workers for all the time they work. Instead, the industry continues to cheat them out of their pay.

Twice, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) has surveyed poultry plants in this country to assess the industry's compliance with the nation's basic wage and hour laws. The most recent survey completed in late 2000 revealed:

- 100% of plants surveyed failed to pay workers for all hours worked.

- 66% of poultry workers nationally are underpaid by the industry.

- 65% of workers were improperly denied overtime wages.

- 35% of poultry workers had illegal deductions taken from their paychecks.

The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) is assisting poultry workers, most of whom are Latino or new immigrant workers, in their effort to end the poultry industry's wage and hour rip-off.

Poultry industry lobbyists and their friends on Capitol Hill are encouraging the DOL to drop wage and hour law enforcement in the poultry industry, stripping these workers of basic American right to be paid for the work that they do.

When we expressed our concerns about relaxing wage and hour protections in the industry to the Secretary, she agreed to meet with the UFCW to hear from workers' perspective.

I offered to host the Secretary in a discussion with poultry workers so that she might learn first hand what it's like to work inside one of our nation's poultry processing plants.

A basic American principle is at stake. If you do the work, you should be paid for it. And we hope the Secretary of Labor vigorously applies the law, ensuring that these workers get the pay that they have earned.

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