Michael Clifford: Beef factory workers are living in fear

Proper investigation needs to be  conducted into how essential staff in the meat industry are treated

A Covid-19 testing facility in Tullamore, Co Offaly, where nine people have tested positive for the virus in the Carroll Cuisine meat factory.

Society needs all sorts to keep functioning. It needs those who can turn a buck, who oil the wheels of commerce, which in turn keeps the economy ticking over.

It also needs essential workers, people on whom society depends to keep supplying the basics even during, for instance, a deadly pandemic.

Naturally, both the buck turner and the essential worker are valued and this is reflected in how the state assists them in getting on with it. Or is that really the case?

This week we heard a lot about the essential workers who toil in the beef processing industry.

Outbreaks of the pandemic in beef factories in the midlands has led to the localised lockdown.

A spotlight has been turned on an industry which, according to the chair of the Oireachtas Covid Committee Michael McNamara, has enjoyed “a large degree of latitude for a long time”.

One man who knows a lot about the beef industry is that great buck turner Larry Goodman.

Last year his ABP group of beef processing companies had a turnover of €2.3bn.

He built an empire on beef in the 1980s, assisted in part by generous state and EU grants.

He also benefited from what was known as Export Credit Insurance, which effectively meant the state underwrote the risk incurred for selling beef to faraway countries like Iraq.

Then in 1990, the first Gulf War came crashing down on Goodman’s empire.

Such was the importance of this businessman to the state that the Dáil was recalled from its summer recess.

Goodman’s companies were bailed out.

The beef baron, like the banks in time to come, was simply too big to fail.

The whole farrago led to a tribunal being set up to examine how things had been conducted in the beef industry.

The beef tribunal cost €45m and brought down a government.

It uncovered fraud and tax evasion but found no evidence that Goodman knew anything about these practices in his companies.

His group of family companies now also have interests in healthcare and property development.

For instance, Goodman companies have stakes in the three major private hospitals, the Hermitage and Blackrock clinics in Dublin and the Galway clinic, which have benefited from the €115m a month that was paid to the state’s private hospitals in the early phase of the pandemic.

The beef baron is the landlord for the building housing the Department of Health, which is located in the former HQ of Bank of Ireland on Dublin’s Baggot Street. The rent on the building is around €10m per annum.

There is no doubt but that he is a man who knows the value of hard work and how to turn a big buck.

Last year the Irish Times reported that nine Goodman companies made a profit of €170m in 2018 and had assets worth more than €3.45bn.

The other detail about this great achievement was that the bulk of the profits were booked in Luxembourg and were largely untaxed. Four of the Luxembourg companies made €123m of that profit and had no employees.

More of his companies are registered in Liechtenstein.

All of this is perfectly legal and demonstrates how the law facilitates those who make vast fortunes because they are apparently deemed essential to the smooth running of the economy.

This includes ensuring that people like Goodman, who benefits from both the exchequer and the peculiarities of the Irish economy, can, to a large extent, avoid the reach of the Irish Revenue Commissioners.

Unfortunately, while the state readily facilitates a big buck turner like Goodman, it has no such consideration for essential workers in the industry where he makes most of his money.

On Thursday the Oireachtas Covid Committee heard from representatives of the industry and trade unions. The pandemic has turned a spotlight once more on working conditions in meat factories.

None of the factories at the centre of the outbreaks in the Midlands are Goodman owned.

The industry draws about 70% of its workforce from overseas.

Unfortunately, the committee didn’t hear first hand from any of the workers about their conditions of employment.

SIPTU organiser Greg Ennis told the committee that he couldn’t get anybody willing to speak about the conditions in which they work.

What goes on behind the closed doors of the meat factories remains something of a mystery, as does the status of employment of workers.

It is entirely unclear how many workers in the industry are employed through agencies, a red flag for exploitation or bogus self-employment.

Ennis told the committee that he estimated around 30% of workers were retained by agencies, which would have recruited them abroad.

“Many agency workers feel very vulnerable,” he said, adding that some who contracted the virus didn’t give contact tracing information for fear of identifying other workers who might lose their jobs.

Yet the meat industry claims only 2% of workers are employed through agencies. Where lies the truth?

There is no sick pay in the industry. What of the worker with symptoms, who maybe doesn’t even speak English? Does he go to work or stay at home? To whom has he an obligation?

Since the outbreak of the pandemic, there have been just 39 inspections of meat factories by the Health and Safety Authority.

Yet only nine of these were unannounced, the committee was told. That has all the signs of our old friend light-touch regulation.

Nora Labo, an organiser with the Independent Workers Union, told the committee that she is convinced that the reason Ireland has witnessed so many worrying outbreaks in meat plants is due to “the workers' substandard employment and living conditions which are the result of the industry’s long- term disregard for the well-being of its staff".

What emerges is a picture of a group of essential workers who live in fear of their livelihood being whipped away.

The industry denies this but it is clear that neither the elected nor permanent government wants to know the reality.

Instead, they prefer to turn a blind eye to what these essential workers may or may not be enduring.

Surely it’s not too much to ask that a proper investigation is conducted into how essential workers in the meat industry are treated?

It’s high time that a tiny degree of obligation is shown to all those who work on the factory floor in a sector where entrepreneurs like Goodman have been able to accumulate so much wealth.