Lawyers of a veteran meat-packing employee who has died of coronavirus last month have sued his former boss, the meat JBS company, accusing it of wrongful death and negligence over the Haitian immigrant’s deadly encounter with the covid-19.
Enock Benjamin, 70, a union steward from Northeast Philadelphia, labored at JBS’s Souderton slaughterhouse, and died on April three from respiratory failure related to the pandemic virus, according to the Philadelphia Medical Examiner’s Office.
The suit, filed Thursday in Philadelphia Common Pleas Courtroom, says that JBS failed to provide workers with face masks and different other security measures on the 1,400-employee meat-processing complex, and instead tacked onto the manufacturing schedule a “Saturday kill” program in March to fulfill demand within the “public panic purchases of ground meat.”
“By selecting profits over security, JBS demonstrated a reckless disregard to the rights and security of workers,” the suit claims.
JBS was not was’nt made any comment about that up to now.
The suit is among the very first of many anticipated to be filed nationwide towards a U.S. meat-processing industry ravaged by the pandemic. Crowded conditions in pork, beef and poultry crops and the transportation of “essential” meat-processing employees to jobs in packed vans have led to outbreaks throughout the nation
