FAST FOOD NATION Chapter 8Isai AmayaTyler Neville

The Most Dangerous Job

Around 5,000 cattle enter one of the nation’s largest slaughterhouses

Factory workers wear chain mail armor to protect themselves from their knives and other’s knives

The cattle ride on hooks conveyor belt style very quickly through jobs like “knockers” (hits the cow on the head with a large machine to knock it out so it can’t struggle while it is killed), “stickers” who do nothing but slit the necks of cattle every ten seconds for upwards of eight and a half hours, and other various jobs which require power saws and large knives. These workers are covered in blood and packed into small spaces with other workers doing their jobs at a furious pace with dangerous tools, so accidents happen all the time.

Sharp knives

Employees use their knives for all their work and constantly sharpen it, dull knives put extra strain on their joints and muscles causing many workplace injuries and keeping the injury rate three times higher than an average U.S. Factory

The furious work and pressure of the lines have encouraged many workers to turn to drugs like speed to help their work, some bosses even deal the drugs to the workers to encourage work. This creates a degenerative society within the already dangerous workplace

The Worst

Some of the most dangerous jobs in meatpacking belong to the night cleaning crews, they clean up floors covered in blood with high pressure hoses using a mixture of water and chlorine heated up to 180 degrees. This creates a thick fog at about 100 degrees, adding to the danger of cleaning the large dangerous machinery.

These workers lose body parts like fingers and arms regularly, and some even die from machinery accidents and toxic fumes from the blood collection tanks

Don’t get caught

The Reagan administration was determined to reduce OSHA’s authority

Companies would cover up accidents and not keep record of many to prevent the OSHA from inspecting

The value of an arm

Companies now give benefits to workers that get hurt on the job. Losing an arm-$36000

If the injury can easily be fixed then workers are sent back to work ASAP.

An amputated finger gets anywhere from $2,200-$4,500

Deformation of head is maximum $2,000

Kenny

If an injury occurs companies try to make it as less “severe” as possible

Kenny was a worker at a slaughterhouse that had his arm stuck in a machine. The machine had to be taken apart for his hand to be removed. He was taken to the hospital and soon returned to work like nothing ever happened

Biased?

We don’t think he was biased against anything in this chapter. He just states facts and tells true stories from his experiences.