Back to index of Nerve 15 - Winter 2009

The Jungle is back:
the human price of “eating healthy”

By Leo Singer

I reached for a pack of leafy salad on the shelf in Lidl. Nicely prepared and pre-washed, 50p... “Do you fancy MY salad?” asked a young woman with a foreign accent behind my back. First I did not get what she meant by “her” salad. “I mean my salad,” she repeated and laughed. “I pack these salads. It’s my job.” “That’s interesting,” I said. I used to work as a meat packer for a short time, so we engaged in a conversation which brought us to a nearby cafe.

“It is the purest humiliation you can imagine. We work twelve-hour shifts for the minimum wage without getting extra money for overtime; the same with work over weekends. It’s very cold there, like in a fridge, and very wet, a lot of chlorine around. Our manager hates us and usually shouts at us to work faster. He calls us ‘stupid bastards’!”

There are periods of high and lower demand. Before Easter, relations got tense, people were tired, and they often worked fourteen-hour shifts. The manager used every opportunity to rant at people. Once they did not sign in the book at the reception; they couldn’t sign, because at the time of the arrival at 7am the book was not there yet, and everybody had to rush to change into their working clothes and get to positions at the production lines. On another occasion, the manager threw a trolley against a female Czech worker, because the racks with vegetables on lay on the floor, not on the trolleys. Sometimes he would try to kick people while shouting insults.

“When we start work we have to change into the dirty coats left after the previous shift. Imagine this: dressing into a dirty, sweaty, stinking and wet coat in a factory where the temperature is seven degrees! This is horrible; they do not bother to prepare clean clothes for us. When I tried to take a coat with me into the changing room and leave it for my next shift, I was shouted at.”

Her experience comes from the Salads To Go factory in Skelmersdale. The majority of their workers come from Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Most of them speak very little English and have never seen any trade union presence in their workplace. My experience of packing meat for Tranfoods is similar, although the conditions were slightly better. Verbally offending workers was not the norm although it did happen. But even without these extremes my overall recollection is the feeling of humiliation. I recall that before each shift we had to hang up boots in the changing room, boots that were randomly lying in water on the floor, left behind by the previous shift... these cold, wet, sweaty, stinky boots... and then quickly rush into the cold factory with the supervisor shouting at us to move faster. I feel humiliation when I recall that as agency workers we were not allowed to have any private locker in the changing room or any access to the coffee machine. The division of workers was clearly visible, as the lucky ones who had company contracts were wearing yellow or red helmets. We were the bottom, the agency workers. And I feel shame when I recall how small the shed outside the gate was... how we had to squeeze together under this shed when it rained heavily during our breaks.

Tranfoods stands in the middle of a shipyard, church and some warehouses. This is the industrial zone near the centre of Birkenhead and the smell of meat in the air reminded me of The Jungle, the famous novel by Upton Sinclair written over a century ago. He portrayed the brutal life of Lithuanian workers in a huge Chicago meat factory called ‘The Yards’. The scenes were so drastic that the book was censored. It still caused a public outcry but to Sinclair’s strong disappointment these moral citizens were concerned about the horrible hygienic standards around their meat rather than the exploitation of workers.

In the salad factory the production line turns faster and faster. Last year, when the demand and production was peaking, they ran two shifts. My new friend worked twelve hours a day, six days a week, for the period of three weeks. This year however when the demand was at its peak, they worked for fourteen hours a day! The manager just didn’t call in the other shift. Once instead of thirteen people on the shift only seven turned up; the people present had to do the same amount of work. The bosses refused to call in more people even when workers complained that they were too tired.

“The manager is constantly reminding us that there are people queuing up to get our jobs. And it’s true! You can see these people waiting in the canteen. There is more of them this year than previous years. We see them almost every day when starting the shift. They are waiting for their chance if one of us should not get to work on time. You never know when you might get the sack. If they stop liking you, you are out. You are kicked off in the middle of a shift, no problem. People were sacked for chewing gum, for not being dressed as wanted, for talking...”

Salads To Go - starting with four workers in 2000 - now employ 160 people. Shelf space for local fresh foods has grown more than 10% in the UK and Ireland in the last year. All this growth is intrinsically linked to the new culture of healthy food - fresh, chilled, reduced fat, “5 a day”, low calories... These goods and their images are everywhere but the images of people producing them are nowhere.

Our lives are finally getting greener: but is it the green of the Nature or The Jungle?

From the Salads To Go website:

“Salads to go…. is based in the heart of the fertile Lancashire plain, synonymous with salad cultivation for several generations.
We operate from one of the most modern salad processing plants in Europe. Food safety, innovation and passion for our products, drive our continuous growth.
We have a comprehensive and exciting range of prepared leaf salads, which complement the portfolios of our Food Service and Retail clients.”

(The web link is - you'd never guess - www.saladstogo.co.uk)

Printer friendly page

Sorry Comments Closed

Comments are closed on this article