Raymundo Diaz, a worker at the Worthington plant and member of UFCW Local 1162, said the company is "now paying workers $4.46 per week for PPE [personal protective equipment], which comes to only a few minutes per day--not the real time you spend washing up the equipment--but it is something."

Lisa Mejia, one of the plaintiffs named in the suit, reported that the weekly compensation is paid only to those who work with knives and comes to six minutes' worth a day. "Six minutes would have been a lot more fair if everyone got that."

It is a common practice by the packing bosses not to give workers paid time during their shift to sanitize their safety equipment, change their clothes, or change out their knives. Workers are forced to come in early, use their breaks, and stay late in order to do this. It is important that equipment be sanitized since it is used in food production.

Diaz explained that the real time it takes is more like 10 or 15 minutes a day to perform this work.

The contract between the UFCW and the Swift plant in Worthington expires in June 2001. Diaz hopes "that we can get 10 minutes of paid cleanup time for everyone in the next contract." The current settlement only affects workers who use knives as part of their job.

The lawsuit was filed on May 24, 1999, and covered the period from June 1996 to May 1999. Diaz explained that the settlement payment was received by all those who signed onto the suit regardless of whether they used knives.

According to the union complaint, Swift violated the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, the Minnesota Fair Labor Standards Act, and the Iowa Wage Payment Collection Law.

Last July workers at Quality Pork Processors in Austin, Minnesota, filed a suit against the company for the same practice of not paying for cleanup time. Some 700 workers have signed onto the suit and union attorneys sent notices to another 2,600 current and former employees asking them to join the action.

Over the last couple of months, company and union representatives along with their attorneys have been filming workers cleaning up and exchanging equipment. In early January the company began instituting the practice of bringing a cart around to the line with knives to exchange as opposed to making workers stand in line during breaks to get equipment.

Karen Ray is a member of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 9 and works at Quality Pork Processors.  
 
 
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