South Dakota Voices for Justice, the ACLU, Dakota Rural Action, and dozens of other organizations and individuals have signed an open letter asking Governor Kristi Noem to spend a little time talking to Smithfield Foods Sioux Falls employees to balance the time she’s spent talking to Big Pig CEO Ken Sullivan and other dons of capital:
Governor Noem, you have stated several times that your job is to “balance the interests” of worker safety with an essential infrastructure industry to get back up and running. You have praised Smithfield for taking necessary measures to keep Smithfiled workers safe.
Unfortunately, we as community advocates have known since at least March 23 that these safety measures were not happening, though COVID-19 cases were being reported at Smithfield. Further, after its shut down, the April 22, 2020 CDC Report on Smithfield clearly states, “We observed some employees still working at the plant either not wearing facemasks or wearing them incorrectly (e.g., wearing them over the mouth but not the nose)” (pg 4). This confirms that even after the shutdown, Smithfield did not provide facemasks to employees in the building and did not properly educate employees on how to wear face masks if they had one.
…As you have spent countless hours with Smithfield and business leaders, we ask that you balance your time by promptly meeting with us, the people, and Smithfield employees to hear firsthand the conditions inside that plant before the shutdown. We are available for video-conferencing.
…Governor Noem, you represent each and every single person in South Dakota. Our communities are busy recovering from COVID-19, healing from the trauma of losing loved ones and from the trauma of an employer who is blaming them for the community spread while trying to get them to come back to work. As community leaders who represent communities of color, frontline and essential workers, and Smithfield employees, we have never been invited to your table to have these conversations. We ask that you make that time for us now so we can safely, and with sound conscience, get South Dakota back up and running [South Dakota Voices for Justice et al., open letter to Governor Kristi Noem, 2020.04.30].
Governor Noem says maybe:
Noem said Thursday afternoon that she had seen the letter, which the group said was sent to her office at 10:30 that morning, but did not directly respond to a question in her daily press conference about whether she would meet with the group.
“We just received the letter and was just discussing it while walking over here to the press conference,” Noem said. “We will certainly be following up with them” [Morgan Matzen, “Groups Ask to Meet with Noem to Discuss Safety of Meat Plant Workers,” Rapid City Journal, 2020.04.30].
Governor Noem has had time for seven interviews with Fox News in the past three weeks. Smithfield workers and labor advocates will be lucky if they get one… because, come on, workers! You’re not going to get Kristi what she wants in Washington! Pipe down and get back to work risking your lives for our wieners!
Isn’t SD lucky to have its very own Sarah Palin? :-(
Well its been at least 2 weeks since Gov. Noem openly chastised a news reporter at that presser for not getting all the facts on both sides of a news flash and then admitted she had listened to her buddy CEO Ken at Smithfield numerous time and NOT ONCE listened to the workers complaints. Now two weeks later she has to eat crow and finally do what she should have done then.
Kudos to those orgs for standing up for South Dakotans against the gov. They’re forced to play a role similar to the Maryland National Guard. The GOP is not on the side of the people. For the GOP, the right to life dies at birth.
Good Loren. Mt Rushmore is at the top of the trumpie list.
It is so interesting to have elected republican leaders who retaliate against ordinary citizens.
Anyone want to take my bet that Arrogant A$$ finds a way to comment about how good his repulsive face would look on that rock? I’ll give you 2-1 odds. He’ll get photos done that show him standing in front of it, his orange face next to theirs.
🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮
This is the beginning of his campaign to get his grotesque face up there, along with his desire for a “Noble” prize.
Meat shortage?! It’s their fault via over-zealous, dangerous consolidation. That consolidation hurts small towns and businesses, too. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-29/tyson-foods-helped-create-the-meat-crisis-it-now-warns-against
Meat shortage greater than suggested. It’s ironic that the consolidation of meat processing ushers in greater use of vegan and vegetarian diets – in addition to fostering food inflation. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-01/u-s-beef-output-is-down-way-more-than-shutdowns-suggest?cmpid=BBD050220_CORONAVIRUS&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_term=200502&utm_campaign=coronavirus
trump republicans have made China even more advanced digitally (not fingers or toes Higgins), so they have not suffered any meat or food shortages so the people can order and get what is needed in their households. Amazing what trump republicans can overlook when you get patents (33) of them from China to sell your products exclusively.
“Digitally Enabled Delivery Systems: In China’s major cities, groceries and other items purchased online can be delivered to the home within as little as 20 minutes following a purchase. This is largely down to the deployment of digital technology. Alibaba’s Cainiao network, for example, supports the supply chains of the merchants it serves via an AI-enabled digital inventory system that links the online and offline shopping worlds, in which merchants’ physical stores serve an extended distribution network. As a result, almost as soon as the lockdown was declared in Wuhan, Alibaba was shipping medical and food supplies into the province.
Consumer Comfort with the Online World: In the past five years, Alibaba Group, JD.com, MTDP (Meituan Dianping) and many other companies have transformed the purchasing behavior of Chinese consumers, moving them away from bricks-and-mortar shopping into online spaces, often consolidated through a so-called “super app.” As of 2019, China’s e-commerce penetration had, by one estimate, reached 36.6% of retail sales, with 71% of Chinese consumers transacting online at some point, mostly via smartphone apps (80% of e-commerce transactions).”
Keep in mind always the last 5 years the senate has been in the control of Beijing Mitch (husband of Elaine Chao), another grifter, to help move goods from China to the US. So no wonder China has advanced while we have to make 60,000 masks for Rapid City. Duh.