Catherwood LibraryILR School

Lawyers for the Southern Poverty Law Center will argue that the firing of almost a dozen protesting workers at a South Carolina poultry processing plant was most likely illegal. The NLRA protects workers from retaliation for conducting protected concerted activity questioning pay and working conditions. The workers had approached their union representative and then their supervisors for a month without getting a response to their concerns that their jobs were increasingly hazardous due to the Covid-19 situation and that it warranted better protections at work along with hazard pay. While the company had agreed in talks with the union to a $1 increase the week of the protest, the workers did not find that sufficient. More than 10,000 workers have fallen ill across 170 meat packing plants in the United States with at least 45 deaths; there were over a 1000 cases at a plant in South Dakota, making it one of the most concentrated outbreaks in the U.S.