Smithfield Foods will spend $100 million to give its 40,000 production and distribution workers nationwide a bonus, even as the new coronavirus has shuttered key midwestern plants.
Company officials have not responded to repeated Daily Press requests for comment about whether the virus is affecting operations in its hometown, where Isle of Wight County officials say it employs more than 1,000 people.
“To the tens of thousands of heroes in our Smithfield Family, thank you for fighting COVID-19 by putting food on tables across America,” company CEO Kenneth M. Sullivan said in a statement announcing the bonus last week, two days after it had to close its giant South Dakota slaughterhouse because more than 600 employees there came down with the coronavirus.
The South Dakota plant processes 4-5% of the nation’s pork. Its closing had a knock-on effect up and down the supply chain that brings meat to American supermarkets.
In addition to idling indefinitely the 3,700 workers at the plant, the closing affects more than 550 hog farmers who supply it, and led the company to close a sausage and bacon plant in Wisconsin for two weeks, while a ham processing plant in Missouri will remained closed until South Dakota officials allow the slaughterhouse to reopen.
“Our country is blessed with abundant livestock supplies, but our processing facilities are the bottleneck of our food chain,” Sullivan said. “For the security of our nation, I cannot understate how critical it is for our industry to continue to operate unabated.”
Workers in Smithfield processing plants routinely wear items that cover their faces, hands, heads and bodies. The company said it has enhanced cleaning and disinfecting beyond what federal food safety regulations require, while it had already maintained strict biosecurity procedures which ban all nonessential visitors from its facilities. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration says there is no evidence COVID-19 is transmitted by food or food packaging.
Employees who test positive for COVID-19 are told not to come to work and are paid while on quarantine.
An employee at Smithfield’s large North Carolina processing plant told WECT-TV in Wilmington, North Carolina, that plant managers promised $500 bonuses for not calling out of work during the month of April. But, he added, managers also tell people to stay home if they feel sick, as he himself did. He said he could not get a test when he went to a local hospital.
Smithfield has said employees will be entitled to bonuses under the $100 million program and an earlier $20 million one, whether or not an illness prevents them from working. It denied any contention that its bonuses were meant to encourage employees to work when they are ill.
Dave Ress, 757-247-4535, dress@dailypress.com
