Front Burner - Cargill: North America's largest single coronavirus outbreak

Episode Date: May 7, 2020

North America's largest single coronavirus outbreak started at Cargill, a meat-packing plant located in High River, Alta. Over 1,500 cases have been linked to it, with 949 employees testing positive, and one death. Despite the harrowing statistics, the plant reopened this week. CBC reporter Carolyn Dunn on what led to the outbreak, and why there's such a push to keep the plant open.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Jamie Poisson. Workers returned to the cargo meat plant this week after it became the site of not just Canada's, but the largest single coronavirus outbreak in North America, which is really saying something because there have been some huge outbreaks in U.S. meatpacking plants as well. Over 1,500 cases have been linked to the Cargill plant,

with 949 employees testing positive. There have also been two deaths. A few weeks ago, a woman named Hip Boy passed away from the virus. She had worked at Cargill for over 20 years. Earlier this week, her husband, Nanu Nguyen, who also works at the plant and contracted COVID-19 as well, talked about her through an interpreter. So basically there was no symptoms. He didn't see that was coming. It came so fast. He didn't see that was coming. It came so fast. She was a wonderful wife.

She spoiled me. She never argued with me. And then, late Wednesday afternoon, a second death connected to the plant. Armando Sayege, the father of a worker who was visiting his family from the Philippines. The union representing the employees is calling on all levels of government to shut down production at Cargill, which is responsible for almost 40% of beef processing in Canada. Today, what led to this outbreak and what's the risk of opening this facility back up again? Carolyn Dunn is with me. She's the CBC national correspondent in Calgary. And just a note to say, Carolyn and I spoke before Armando's death was made public.

This is Frontburner. Hi, Carolyn. It's such a pleasure to have you on the podcast. Thank you so much for joining me. Oh, well, thanks for having me. I wish we could talk under better circumstances. Absolutely. This story is really heartbreaking, and the team at FrontBurner has been wanting to cover it for a while now. So I'm really, really grateful that you've taken the time to talk about it with us. The cargo plant is in High River, Alberta, about 40 minutes outside of Calgary. And I know that you were there just the other day as workers returned. And can you tell me what that scene was like? In a word, nervous. You know, how can you blame them? These

workers are going back to, as you said, you know, a workplace where at least half of the folks who work there have become sick, where one of their co-workers has died. How are you feeling about going to work? I feel bad. It's still a danger. Outside the plant, the union was handing out masks and information sheets. You have to remember that they have been asking for a stop work order. They didn't want the plant to open. Do you want a mask? Do you want a mask with some information?

Just here? Do you want one or two? And we did manage to talk to a couple of people. One gentleman we talked to sort of came in and out of the plant and he was only there asking for a leave of absence because he has a pregnant wife and he just was too concerned to go in and not know what was going to happen.

I asked one month before I go back to work because I'm still a little bit scared for my baby, right? Another gentleman we talked to basically said he was going in to lay eyes on what the company had done. Now I want to go back to work to see the situation. And his message is that, you know, if things are just the same, or if he felt uncomfortable at all, that he just wasn't going to go in and go to work and risk his family. If the situation is not good, it's unsafe, I'm sorry about that. And you have to remember that Monday opening was only partial reopening. The rest of the operation is opening throughout the week.

What was opening on Monday was just what the company calls the harvesting floor, but what everyone else calls the kill floor. That's where the cattle are stunned, killed and bled before they go down the line. Right. This is how the plant works. Can you tell me a little bit more about how the plant works on like a regular day, sort of pre-pandemic? Well, there's about 4,500 cattle that are slaughtered and processed in that plant every day. As you said, it's about 40% of Canada's beef product that is processed in that one plant. That is processed in that one plant. And essentially they are killed in one area, bled, and then they go through the processing, which is essentially just these giant tables where they cut it down. And they cut the animal down into its various parts.

It is shoulder to shoulder. It is elbow to shoulder. It is elbow to elbow. And it's really hard, cold sometimes, physical work. And they're not the highest paying jobs in the world. They make less than $18 an hour to start there. So it's tough work. It's tough work. And that would be probably why you get such a large percentage of new Canadians and temporary foreign workers who work there. I do understand that there are many people of Filipino descent, also Vietnamese, Ethiopian, Eritrean, also some temporary foreign workers, as you mentioned, that work in this plant. as you mentioned that work in this plant. Yeah, absolutely. And then there are, you know, third and fourth generation Canadians are from Alberta. You know, it's a very, very diverse workforce, but it's kind of, you know, a little bit of a hidden workforce. Having talked to some

of them, they say, if there's one thing that comes from this, it's that people understand how important we actually are to them when they go and pick up their food at the grocery store. So in some ways, COVID-19 has at least shone a light on what they do and how important they are. I want to get a better understanding of how we got here to this many infections. I know that you spoke to a worker about her experience at Cargill, and we're not using her real name because she's worried that speaking out might affect her job security. We're using the name Rachel instead. that speaking out might affect her job security. We're using the name Rachel instead.

It's so scary to go into work every day wondering, am I going to contract this virus? And when I contract this virus, will I die from it? And what's going to happen to my family if I die? How are they going to be financially secure? They're going to miss me. And what's going to happen if my family gets it? When did she start hearing concerns about COVID-19 at this plant? Well, between Rachel's account and also having talked to other people now in the plant,

we know that there was a lot of anxiety even before there was a confirmed case on April 6th. You know, probably like a lot of workplaces. So there was anxiety like there was everywhere. March 23rd, the company starts saying that it's going to increase safety measures, increase sanitation, putting plastic sheets in common areas like locker rooms and the lunchroom. But, and Jamie, this is really key going forward. Workers were still working elbow to elbow, shoulder to shoulder in the production lines. And production had not been slowed to give them any more space. There's also the concern of like, are the tables being cleaned between people moving?

Are the walls being cleaned down? Because people touch the walls, people touch everything. And yes, they tried to limit touch points, but it just did not work. That, despite workers having started to, you know, raise concerns, it was becoming very clear that the anxiety level about COVID-19 and what a petri dish, a meat plant like cargill or any of the other ones might be. And then, of course, we have the first case that was diagnosed on April 6th, and that sort of ratchets up the discomfort and concern in that plant.

And so what happened after this first case is announced? Well, between April 6th and April 13th, the number of cases at Cargill proliferates from 1 to 38. That's a real harbinger of things to come. It was a real sign. And that's when you started getting the media spotlight turned to this outbreak. The union says there are dozens of confirmed cases at the plant. Cargill says it's added more safety measures like temperature checks, enhanced sanitizing. So the company cuts hours to one shift at this point to prevent the spread. Well, that only gets people inside the plant even more

freaked out. You know, they're trying to figure out how cutting the shift is in any way creating more space between workers. It's doing the opposite. The concern was after it all was said and done, we were so piled up because we were so short-staffed, they moved everybody to one table, causing them to all be shoulder to shoulder and also transferring people from one spot to another and not cleaning between people being transferred. And so some of them are calling in sick because they're scared. Some of them are calling in sick because they're actually sick. And then this is key. Some people are coming to work with symptoms for two reasons. One,

because they need the money. They need the job to feed their family. And two, because we have heard the accounts of a number of people who are being told that it's okay to come in with certain symptoms or if someone in their household has tested positive. What we don't know is how widespread that kind of message was. Was it, you know, a couple mistakes made here or there? Was it a protocol? We don't actually know. And I can guarantee you it is going to be one of the key points that will drive any kind of investigation or reviews. And as you mentioned before, during this time, the shift was cut. That would just mean that people were working for less time during the day. But this production line that you described, which is just packed with people cutting down the meat, like that hasn't changed at all. Right. And this is when the union starts saying,

well, you have to shut this down. You have to shut this down or people are going to start getting sick. I think as soon as that email went out, everybody, that fear was finally like really there. Everybody was so frustrated. Everybody was asking a million and one questions like, why aren't we closed yet? When are we closing? What's going on? The company takes that as sort of an unofficial call for an illegal work stoppage.

And then relations start breaking down between the company and the union. And all of a sudden that does really bad things for communications, because you have the company communicating with workers, who some of them, by the way, there are language barriers with to begin with. You also have the union communicating with workers, and then you have public health authorities through their daily briefing and through the news media communicating with workers, and they just don't know what to do. They're really confused about what to do, many of them. And I know this is something Rachel talked about, this breakdown in communication.

Nobody was able to get through to HR or production support, which is a different version of HR at Cargill. Nobody was able to get through even barely to the front desk. There were so many phone calls coming in they were very understaffed another thing i want to ask you about is that we talked before about how there are foreign workers vulnerable workers um in these plants and i know that the company and provincial officials have also talked about the living conditions of many of the workers and how this might have contributed to the outbreak as it grew. And can you talk to

me a little bit about that? Right. So after it was sort of confirmed publicly that there was an outbreak at Cargill, there was obviously a lot of questions of the chief medical officer, Dr. Dina Hinshaw about, you know, how could this happen, what was being done. And she answered a question that basically turned into a little bit of a controversy, really, because she, you know, started talking about how some of the ways that some of these workers live had contributed to the spread, and that is like carpooling to work. Not just looking at the plant itself, but looking at how do people get back and forth to work, thinking about households, and there's households

where people simply don't have the space to self-isolate if they're a case or if they're a close contact, and needing to provide supports to those people. You know, multi-family households. You know, I think she was just trying to explain why it might have spread what the exterior factors are, but it really came across to many of the folks at Cargill who work in Cargill as having blamed the workers. And you have to remember that these people are feeling quite a stigma to begin with.

You know, they're going into the grocery store and people are afraid of them. Sometimes they're being asked to not come into places. Particularly visible minorities who work at Cargill were feeling that because they were the most easily identifiable as Cargill workers. Cesar Calas says he's been hearing a lot from his community about this. He's a Filipino-Calgarian and a volunteer with the Philippines Emergency Response Task Force. The Filipinos have a culture called bayanihan, which is being heroes to each other. And so we see that a lot. Many Filipinos are volunteering to give care packages. So that's my appeal to leadership is let's unite, let's collaborate, let's not divide. Because finger pointing doesn't help.

So there was a real concern that they were, you know, being blamed for this. I think that didn't start out as an intention to blame, but it was certainly felt that way by the community. And, you know, they're anxious and upset to begin with, so that didn't help. Certainly, at least in unintended consequences, it must be so difficult. All these people who are trying to make ends meet or trying to put food on the table for their families and are having to make these sort of risk assessments. It just sounds so stressful. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection.

Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization. Empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. So if the first case of COVID-19 is April 6th, and then we see this huge proliferation, Cargill doesn't suspend operations until April 20th, the same day that Alberta Health Services announced that a Cargill worker had died of COVID-19. Again, these are reminders of why we are collectively working to prevent spread of this virus. It's quite the gap in time there. And I wonder what the company has to say

about that delay. Well, they do say that they had done a lot of work in the plant at the time, that they had put in some physical distancing, they had changed the way the production line so that people were not facing each other. They had increased sanitation, that type of thing. And I talked to John Keating, who is the president of Cargill, and he says that they were following public health advice and, you know, doing everything that they thought that they should be doing. We've been a huge part of this wonderful town, this wonderful community. They've always trusted us, and we're just asking them to trust us now.

We're working really, really hard to keep our employees safe. We don't have a playbook for this. We wish we did. This is something that we're learning from. What do we know now about the kind of oversight that this plant was getting from provincial authorities? I wouldn't be alone in assessing it as probably not enough. On April 15th, two days after the number of cases had proliferated to 38 and were continuing to grow, Provincial Occupational Health and Safety conducts its first inspection of the plant, and it does so not in person, but by FaceTime. Somehow Occupational Health and Safety from that video deems the plant safe.

And then further to that, there's this town hall that happens with Provincial Occupational Health and Safety, with provincial health authorities. And the provincial minister of agriculture, Devin Dreeschen, takes to Twitter and also in that live stream of the town hall and deems that the plant is safe. That's on April 18th. There are hundreds of cases by this point. And it's two days before they actually shut down production. And before the first death. Yes, before the first death. In fact, that would probably have been right around when Hip Wee had fallen ill. It would have been right in that time.

So on Friday, she got really sick. And on Saturday, he called the ambulance. And then the next day, she passed away. So it didn't last long at all. Wow. I know. And so what is the reasoning for going back? Because given all that we're talking about today and the fears from the people that work there. I feel that I can't rely on AHS or OHS currently right now. I understand that they're very, very busy, but this seriously needs to be looked into. I think it might surprise people that this plant is opening up

again so quickly. This is going to sound a little clinical, I'm afraid, but Cargill processes 40% of the beef in this country. When Cargill isn't running or another big plant like JBS down the road in Brooks isn't running, it means that the cattle that are being bred for slaughter are not being slaughtered. It costs a huge amount of money to keep feeding them and to keep them healthy. So feedlots and ranchers are actually comparing this to the BSE crisis when the U.S. government and other countries wouldn't buy Canadian beef. It's been nine weeks since Canada's first and only case of so-called mad cow disease surfaced. And still, the borders of the United States and Japan remain closed to imports of Canadian beef.

Ben Thorlickson's feedlot is one of the largest in Canada. We've had our returns reduced by over $400 a head. And this is a situation that demands public sector involvement. So this week the federal government put $125 million into the ag system to help pay for those cattle, to keep feeding them, keep them healthy, and they've left the door open for more. That's obviously a wait-and-see approach if Cargill and the other plants are going to be able to stay open, get rid of the backlog and keep up. But it's not just about keeping the workers safe, which obviously is a priority,

but it's also sort of downstream and how it affects the entire food chain and the entire beef industry, which is a giant industry in Canada. It just goes to show you the snowball effect of this entire pandemic. We're seeing, you know, examples like this everywhere. Kerlyn, what checks and balances are there to make sure that people who do return to work are healthy? Like what has the company put into place? Okay, so the company has done a lot of work and it's, I guess, a matter of debate whether it's enough,

but they have put in barriers between people on that production line. So the best way that I can describe it is if you think about, you know, those barriers that when you go into the grocery store and there's like a plastic shield, they've put something similar to that in between. They are now requiring everybody wear a mask. They're doing temperature checks. There are new rules about carpooling and physical distancing.

They're providing buses with basically physical barriers on it to get people to work. They've changed break times so that there are fewer people taking breaks at the same time to try and keep the crowds out of those common spaces. And they've even rearranged lockers so that people on the same shift aren't trying to get into their lockers at the same time. I spoke to the president of Cargill, John Keating. He's pretty confident that working with provincial health authorities, they've now done what needs to be done. What we're doing is we're continuing to take notes and say, what have we learned? What mistakes did we make? What good things did we do? What can we share with our competitors? I can tell you there's absolutely a sense of wait and see among the workers and their union about whether these measures are enough.

They are continuing to ask for a work stoppage until even more safety measures have been put into place. We are here to give the workers of Cargill a voice. to give the workers of Cargill a voice. 80% of them said that they did not want this plant to open and 85% of them said they were scared to come to work. Some of them came today, undoubtedly because they need to pay their bills. Okay, and do they have any levers to pull on here, the union and the workers?

You know, if they're feeling unsafe, if they feel like the company isn't doing enough. Every worker in Canada has the right to say, I am not attending work today because I don't feel it's safe. We've already talked about the vulnerability of the workforce and whether they are going to feel empowered enough to do that. But, you know, they have bills to pay and they have families to feed. I don't want to go in because of the right to refuse unsafe work, but also I need that financial security. And I was sitting there going, OK, it's my child or it's my job. Not just here, but in the case of the new Canadians and temporary foreign workers, often in their home country as well, they're contributing to the survival of their families there.

Carolyn Dunn, thank you so much for this conversation and for covering the story, which is so important. And I hope that you'll come back soon and keep us updated on what's going on. Anytime. Thanks for having me. So, some more sad news to tell you about today. One of the founders of the groundbreaking German group Kraftwerk has died. Florian Schneider passed away from cancer last month. He's being remembered today as an incredible music innovator. Scheiner and Kraftwerk not only pioneered electronic music, but also influenced so many different kinds of artists. Jay-Z sampled their stuff, Soldat Coldplay, New Order, Madonna, the list goes on and on. Florian Schneider was 73 years old.

I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening to FrontBurner and talk to you tomorrow. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.