The Guardian reported that a U.S. egg factory roasted 5.3 million chickens alive in an effort to cull the spread of the avian flu. This took place at Rembrandt Enterprises in Rembrandt, Iowa as workers did not perform their usual routine of collecting eggs and tending to the birds and were instead tasked with removing the dead poultry.
After the work of removing the poultry was completed over the course of nearly a month, 250 workers were then laid off as the company dramatically reduced its labor force to a small, skeleton crew.
“We get it: it was really inhumane the way they killed them. But chickens are chickens, right? People worked in those barns pulling out dead birds in terrible conditions, feces everywhere, doing 12- or 14-hour days”, said former supervisor Oscar Garcia.
Garcia also contrasted the way in which the company quickly took action against the avian flu and the actions that they took with their workers in response to COVID-19.
“They actually liked the fact that we didn’t require our employees to get vaccinated, because they were hoping we would get employees from the surrounding areas that were requiring their employees to get vaccinated. They’re using it almost as a recruitment tool”, Garcia said.
The capitalist mode of production requires the maximization of profit, and in order to protect their business interests capitalists will not hesitate to take decisive measures. In this scenario, highly exploited laborers were forced to complete grueling work and are rewarded by being laid off when their work is no longer necessary. As long as the capitalist economic system continues to exist, worker employment will be precarious and exploitative, all to the benefit of a small group of capitalist oligarchs.
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