Talk:Meat packing industry

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I've heard, in the 1870s, Mike Cudahy intro refridgeration, if it helps... Trekphiler 05:26, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Original Research

Wikipedia articles must remain unbiased, and sources need to be attributed to all claims made. See WP:OR and WP:NPOV. Some of the discussion about labor disputes seems to be non-neutral. At the very least, these claims must be attributed to a reliable source. Nimur 02:47, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Removed a lot of anti-capitalism stuff

Some comments on my edit;

Because no two animals are the same, the meat packing industry has not been able to automate to the same extent that some other food processors have and remains very labor-intensive. If the meat is to be processed in as cost-effective a manner as possible, labor costs must be minimized by paying the lowest wages possible and maximizing productivity from the workforce. This combined with the nature of the work makes conditions intolerable to many people. In many plants, fewer than one out of ten recruits remains beyond the probationary period.

Wages need to rise to the level sufficient to retain staff. If the economy is growing, there will be competition for labour, and so wages will be forced upwards. If the economy is shrinking, there will be competition for jobs, and wages will be forced downloads. If an enterprise does not pay sufficient wages, such that in the local economic environment other work pays as well for less effort or discomfort, they will not retain staff.

The article states;

If the meat is to be processed in as cost-effective a manner as possible, labor costs must be minimized by paying the lowest wages possible and maximizing productivity from the workforce.

This is of course a general statement which is true for any industry.

This combined with the nature of the work makes conditions intolerable to many people.

I suspect it is actually simply the case that the work is extremely unpleasent. The unpleasentness of the work will increase the remuneration commanded thereby. People then have a choice, of a range of jobs, which offer pay in proportion to the work (the skill, difficulty, unpleasentness, etc, of the work contributing to the pay). Given the extreme unpleasentness of the work in question, people simply choose *not* to take the additional remuneration available to them and select a different job.

As such, I think this particular section is incorrect and I have heavily edited it.

For this reason, many meat packing plants in the developed world are unionized while those that are not are often prime targets for labor organizers.

I have modified the lead in to the next paragraph since it depends on the assertations made in the previous, now edited, paragraph.

All and all packing plants suffer from high turn-around, mainly hiring recent immigrants and having to hire 110% of the required staff for the day particularly in Alberta where abattoirs compete with oil for labor.

This of course acting to drive wages up, but this fact is salient in its omission.

The United States meat packing industry held a prominent focus in the 1906 novel The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, which criticized the treatment of workers and the safety of the products themselves.

A similar view could perhaps be taken of most industries in 1906, compared to the modern day.

Toby Douglass 13:57, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

In the interest of eliminating bias this article has been carved down to a stub. I'm going to try to add back in some of the old content with better sourcing and more objectivity over the next week or two as I find citations to support my claims. Some good information that was there has been lost in the process. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.91.90.112 (talk) 07:38, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] New template inspiration

Perhaps a Template:Leftistrambling would be useful in organizing clean up on Wikipedia? --HalfSerious 06:13, 1 September 2007 (UTC)