Cargill - Fuck you for the single largest outbreak in North America

The BBQ Pit
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And they can’t even pick up a phone to call the family of a dead worker who was rewarded with shocking neglect for her safety for 23 years of service.

These are all immigrants with little prospects that are just doing whatever work they can find to get by. They live in crowded homes because that is what they have to do. Many of the spouses work at the local nursing homes, which are all affected now, including the one where my mother in law lives.

Cargill is notorious. They have always been known to be fucking dicks. This just makes me sick.

And what is going to happen down in the states with the half assed measures being taken so the meat plants can stay open? A fucking mess is what.

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For those of us wondering what Cargill is (from wikipedia):

“Cargill, Incorporated is an American privately held global corporation based in Minnetonka, Minnesota, and incorporated in Wilmington, Delaware.[2][3][4] Founded in 1865, it is the largest privately held corporation in the United States in terms of revenue.[5] If it were a public company, it would rank, as of 2015, number 15 on the Fortune 500, behind McKesson and ahead of AT&T.[6] Cargill has frequently been the subject of criticism related to the environment, human rights, finance, and other ethical considerations.”

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A brief timeline of the Cargill outbreak in Alberta:

- March 30, 2020
The union writes a letter requesting a meeting with Cargill management to discuss safety practices related to Covid 19. Cargill responds two days later, saying there is limited availability for a meeting. The union says as of May, the two parties still have not met.

April 6, 2020
The first case of COVID-19 is confirmed at Cargill’s meat-packing plant near High River, Alta., but the case isn’t reported to the public or the union.

April 11, 2020
CBC News receives tips from community members in High River that multiple Cargill employees are sick and exhibiting symptoms of COVID-19.

April 12, 2020
Alberta Health Services confirms inspectors have been to the site recently to ensure staff are safe but will not say how many workers are sick.

April 13, 2020
The union says 38 workers at Cargill have tested positive for COVID-19 and calls for a two-week closure.
**
April 16, 2020**
The province sets up an assessment centre to test Cargill workers and announces that its protocol for keeping workers safe at food processing plants “has already proven effective” at Cargill.
**
April 17, 2020**
The province says 358 cases of COVID-19 are now connected to Cargill.

April 19, 2020
A woman in her 60s, Hiep Bui, who worked at Cargill, dies of COVID-19.

April 21, 2020
Alberta Health Services establishes a task force of 200 health-care workers to respond to the Cargill outbreak. A total of 515 cases are linked to the plant. Unions call for an independent or criminal investigation.

April 28, 2020
The outbreak spreads to a nearby retirement home and a southern Alberta First Nation, as the total cases connected to the plant rise to 1,167. At this stage, it is now the largest outbreak connected to a single site in North America.

April 29, 2020
Cargill announces it plans to reopen the plant on May 4, 2020. It says new safety measures have been introduced, and that all employees eligible to return to work in the harvest department are asked to report to work.

May 1, 2020
**The union takes legal action **in an effort to stop the plant from reopening.

May 4, 2020
The plant reopens with one shift, as members of the union protest outside. The same day, friends and family hold an online vigil for Hiep Bui, who worked at Cargill for 23 years and died of COVID-19. Her husband, also a worker at the plant, said nobody with Cargill has called him to offer their condolences.

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The government of Alberta has given itself sweeping powers to enact laws without calling the legislature.

What they SHOULD do is remove this plant from the control of a company who is failing to report communicable diseases and putting workers and the entire community at extreme risk. They should criminally charge executives who made the decision to stay open without worker protection. What they WILL likely do with these powers is fire more teachers, gut public pensions and make moves to hobble their political opposition.

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I must admit that until now, I have been generally happy with the Alberta government’s handling of the pandemic - but this particular incident is inexcusable.

The largest meat packing plant in the country should have had great scrutiny as a vulnerable point in our food supply chain and as a facility with an extremely high risk of a serious outbreak. The incompetence is breathtaking.

Alberta is in a crisis like no other it has ever faced. The petroleum industry here will never recover to what it once was. In the midst of this our government has allowed a very predictable incident to take place in our other traditional (and privileged) industry - cattle. The recent history of Mad Cow disease and what it did to the industry is right there, and still they allowed this to happen.

I will just go on to note that at the very beginning of this crisis this government introduced a slew of drastic health care cuts, laying off a large number of nurses and drastically cutting doctor’s and clinics fees.

Premier Jason Kenny has been a sniveling knee jerk reactionary as long as I have known of him - which was back in university. I was not happy to see him get in, but this failure is a level of incompetence much beyond my disapproval of his political philosophy.

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Isn’t this exactly what Western Canadians like Sam Stone want to see though?

I doub’t they see this as particularly bad news.

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Kenney said up front that he wanted to ignore Health Canada and use us to test hydroxychloroquine treatments. He’s a Republican. Like all Republicans, he can go fuck himself.

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I guess the dream is to eliminate the terrible government regulations, like those imposed by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. And perhaps put in some laws that punish the whistleblowers that let the public know that there was an outbreak at the plant.

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Western Canadians like Sam Stone can fuck right off. They’re ruining my home.

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I’m confident that folks like Sam will find a way to blame Trudeau for Cargill’s complete fuck-ups.

I’ve already seen muppets in the comments section of the Calgary paper trying to blame the union because… they didn’t warn the company hard enough.
Seriously. They are that fucking stupid.

This is how many Albertans roll.

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I suppose it would be unethical to start up a GoFundMe asking for people to contribute to my emigrating to Switzerland.

I used to live in a place so remote no roads lead there. Been thinking about that a lot, but then I remember the mosquitoes that could pull fish out of the lake and fly back to shore with them skewered on their snoots.

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Considering that Switzerland’s case rate and death rate per million population is currently about double that of Canada’s, I would not recommend it.

Perhaps PEI or New Brunswick. Or Vancouver Island. They seem to have their shit together.

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I wasn’t thinking of leaving tonight or anything.

14

Holy shit. Canadian Republicans are pushing the Trump/Faux News bullshit, too? I thought it was just Americans.

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Jason Kenney the Premier of Alberta would fit right into Trump’s cabinet.

He attended a private high school for rich pricks and kids whose parents want to ship them off for a while. Dropped out of college after failing to complete classwork. As a young man he was an anti-abortion activist, and liked to argue against the concept of free speech - at least for universities and anyone who disagreed with his right - wing positions.

He’s a career politician who has never held an actual job.
He’s stupid, opinionated, knows little to nothing about science. He’s anti-union and pro-American oil corporations. He has done nothing to diversify Alberta’s oil economy- quite the opposite.

In short, he’s a perfect Trumper.

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I moved from Utah to Alberta in March 2019. After a couple of years of Trump, I was really looking forward to living someplace with boring, relatively liberal politics.

Then, a month after I moved here, Kenney got elected. He’s basically a Trump wannabe. I’m half surprised he doesn’t try to wear the same shape bronzer Trump wears.

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It is un-fucking-believable to me how factories in N America did jack to prepare for Covid.

The Chinese manufacturers reacted 10x better with temperature checks, quarantines for workers, PPE, etc.

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I’ve been pretty impressed by the way it’s being managed here, except for the rush to “reopen the campuses”. The campus issue seems to be more driven by the desire to have the in person teaching to prepare students who will be taking the grueling gaokao soon and those who will be competing for spots in the better high schools than by the science involved. You can read my saga on my return to campus yesterday over in The Quarantine Zone thread about how people are personally affected.

Why did so many places in the US do nothing to prepare? It would have cost money and they were getting noises from the top of the federal government that it was not a serious issue. Yeah, I know; they’re morons for listening to that moron, but, that’s what it looks like to me what happened.