IBP Agrees to Improve Safety at All of Its Plants

WASHINGTON — IBP Inc., one of the nation’s largest meatpackers, bowed to federal pressure Tuesday night and agreed to completely redesign the jobs in all its meatpacking plants in an effort to eliminate crippling injuries caused by repetitive motions.

Union officials called the safety agreement a major breakthrough and said they planned to use it as a pattern for improving safety conditions at the nation’s meatpacking businesses, which have the highest injury rate of any American industry.

The agreement, which is scheduled to be signed today, was negotiated with the Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which had proposed a series of fines totaling $5.7 million for safety violations at IBP’s Dakota City, Neb., and Joslin, Ill., plants. The agreement calls for IBP, which is 51% owned by Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum, to pay a fine of $975,000.

Medical Program

Workers at the two plants, about 4,800, are represented by the United Food & Commercial Workers Union. “The UFCW and IBP have decided to tame the jungle,” a union official said referring to Upton Sinclair’s 1906 expose of the nation’s meatpacking industry.

UFCW officials said the agreement calls for a three-year ergonomics program to redesign jobs in a way that prevents repetitive-trauma injuries. The plan also calls for a medical treatment program and a tracking system for early detection of repetitive-motion disorders. The company has two years to redesign the jobs at Dakota City and another year to make the changes at its 14 other plants.

Ergonomics is the science of designing jobs to fit people rather than making people conform to the work site. Through ergonomists, safety experts have discovered that many nerve entrapment injuries once believed to be part of normal wear and tear on the body were actually work-related.

Heavy Fine Imposed

In the past year, OSHA has taken a particular interest in repetitive-trauma injuries. Last month, OSHA fined John Morrell Co. $4.3 million for unsafe conditions at its Sioux Falls, S.D., plant, where three of every four workers had suffered a reportable injury last year. Many of the injuries involved repetitive trauma. It was the largest single fine in OSHA history and Morrell has vowed to fight it through the courts.

Last year, OSHA fined Chrysler Corp. for repetitive-trauma injuries at its Belvedere, Ill., assembly plant and ordered 13 jobs redesigned. Chrysler is fighting the fine and the redesign order.

One of the biggest potential problem areas for repetitive-trauma injuries, according to safety experts, is the data processing industry, where some entry-level computer jobs require as many as 23,000 key strokes a day.