Americans consume more chicken than ever before — 30 percent more than they did just 20 years ago.

Not only do consumers in the US want chicken, they want it cheap, and in an increasing variety of styles and shapes. Growing demand is squeezing the industry, and as a result, the four industrial poultry giants — Tyson Foods, Perdue Farms, Sanderson Farms, and Pilgrim’s Pride — have made quantity their bottom line. The people feeling the squeeze the most are line workers in colossal poultry processing plants. They often end up working long shifts, at breakneck speeds to keep up with American appetites and tastes, with a single half-hour break, all while earning less than $10 an hour.

The pressure to keep up with the line speed is so great that supervisors routinely deny workers’ requests to go to the bathroom, according to a new Oxfam America report, titledNo Relief: Denial of Bathroom Breaks in the Poultry Industry.

To avoid the embarrassment of becoming so desperate that they urinate or defecate on the floor, many workers say that they’ve grown accustomed to wearing diapers while at work. “I had to wear Pampers,” one worker told Oxfam. “I, and many, many others had to wear Pampers.”

Different plants and departments have varying rules when it comes to bathroom breaks, but the overall consensus among poultry workers surveyed seems to be that leaving the production line to use the restroom is a privilege, not a right. If a worker need to go, someone has to replace them on the line until they come back. Workers say finding a replacement can take up to an hour. Sometimes, they say, a replacement never arrives.One worker at Pilgrim’s plant in Alabama, told Oxfam that the only time he and his hundreds of colleagues were allowed to use the bathroom was during their 30 minute lunch break. In that time, he had to undress from his work gear, eat lunch, line up to use the bathroom and then get back into work gear.

A 2013 report conducted by the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Alabama Appleseed Center for Law and Justice, called Unsafe at These Speeds: Alabama’s Poultry Industry and Its Disposable Workers said some workers reported policies limiting bathroom breaks to five minutes. “Workers described stripping off their gear while running to the restroom, an embarrassing but necessary action to meet the strict five-minute time limit” the report said. “This race to the bathroom is also dangerous because processing plant floors can be slippery with fat, blood, water, and other liquids.”

A worker named Susana, who spoke with VICE news on the condition of using a pseudonym, said that her supervisor at the Tyson poultry plant in Arkansas where she works caps bathroom breaks at seven minutes. Susana’s job is to clean the chickens which have just been eviscerated. It smells like a combination of chicken blood and bleach, she says. It’s also very cold, to protect the machines from overheating.

Susana was one of the 200 workers affected by a chlorine gas leak in 2011, and is involved in an ongoing suit against the plant. She has had serious respiratory problems ever since the incident, but says she has to stay at Tyson because they are providing her with medical services, and she has two children who she needs to support. Because of her respiratory complications, she says that it’s very difficult to get to the bathroom and back in only seven minutes. She’s allowed to take a little more time – because of her health....

Read more; http://www.govtslaves.info/chicken-industry-workers-wear-diapers-because-bosses-allow-no-breaks/