'There's no doubt in our minds that this is a workplace fatality,' said AFL president Gil McGowan on Tuesday

The COVID-19 death of a High River meat plant employee must be treated as a workplace fatality and a criminal investigation should be launched, the Alberta Federation of Labour said Tuesday.

In a letter Tuesday to provincial Labour Minister Jason Copping, AFL president Gil McGowan called for a formal Occupational Health & Safety investigation into the circumstances of the death — which was made public Monday and is the first fatality to result from a large-scale COVID-19 outbreak at the Cargill meat processing plant in High River

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Occupational Health & Safety investigates serious work site incidents, including fatalities, which fall under provincial jurisdiction. OHS is currently working through the formal process to determine whether to open a fatality investigation, Adrienne South, spokeswoman for Copping, said Thursday evening.

The provincial labour group also called for the meat plant’s operator, Cargill Inc., to be subject to an RCMP criminal investigation under the federal Westray Act, a rarely used amendment to the Criminal Code that allows employers to be prosecuted in cases of negligence leading to a workplace injury or death.

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“There’s no doubt in our minds that this is a workplace fatality,” McGowan said in an interview. “And also that it could have been avoided, had the employer and the government suspended operations at that plant when the workers and their union called for it more than two weeks ago.”

As of Tuesday, 401 workers at the High River meat-packing plant — which represents 36 per cent of Canada’s beef processing capacity — had tested positive for COVID-19. On Monday, Cargill announced it would temporarily idle the entire facility and encouraged all employees to seek testing for the virus.

However, the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 401, which represents workers at the Cargill plant, has been saying for weeks the Minnesota-based company wasn’t doing enough to protect employees

Union local president Thomas Hesse wrote to Cargill in mid-April, stating that work was being carried out in a manner contrary to social distancing and endangering roughly 2,000 workers at the facility. At the time, Hesse demanded a two-week closure and a full cleaning and safety inspection of the plant.

Earlier this month, OHS did conduct an inspection of the Cargill plant in High River to review the COVID-19 safety measures being taken to protect workers. The inspection determined that reasonable precautions were being taken by the employer.

However, Hesse has been critical of that inspection, which was conducted via videoconference and not in person by an OHS officer. (South said the reason the inspection was conducted via videoconference was because of the pandemic, and said this method of inspection is not specific or unique to the Cargill facility.)

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“We can’t trust the government on this now, because they could have closed this plant and didn’t,” Hesse said Thursday.

Both Hesse and the AFL are calling for both the Olymel pork processing plant at Red Deer and the JBS meat processing plant at Brooks (which had 77 confirmed cases of Tuesday afternoon) to also be temporarily shut down out of concerns for worker safety.

JBS spokesman Cameron Bruett said in an email Tuesday the Brooks plant has reduced production to one shift, given “increased absenteeism.”

Bruett said the JBS facility has a responsibility to maintain operations to secure the country’s food supply, but added “we will not operate a facility if we do not believe it is safe or if absenteeism levels result in our inability to safely operate.”

Both JBS and Cargill have consistently said they have been implementing temperature testing, enhanced cleaning and sanitizing, face coverings, screening between employee stations, prohibiting visitors, adopting distancing practices where possible and offering staggered breaks and shift flexibility.

AHS officials responded as soon the Cargill outbreak was identified and enhanced safety protocols were put in place, Dr. Deena Hinshaw, Alberta’s chief medical officer of health, said Tuesday.

“But because there are so many people that go in and out of these plants, it’s possible that spread did occur before those protective measures were put into place,” Hinshaw said.

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NDP Opposition Leader Rachel Notley — who has urged all meat plant workers sick with COVID-19 to apply for WCB compensation — said the Cargill employee’s death, as well as the outbreak at the entire facility, should be subject to an OHS investigation.

She also criticized Agriculture Minister Devin Dreeshen, who, two days before the fatality was confirmed and the closure of the plant was announced, publicly assured employees and Albertans that Cargill had taken “all necessary measures” to mitigate risk to its staff.

“It’s outrageous that we’re at a place today where hundreds of people have contracted a deadly virus because the UCP couldn’t see past the supply chain to the people at work,” Notley said in a news release.

The AFL and UFCW are calling for an independent safety inspection of the Cargill plant, as well as the development of a provincewide plan to prevent future outbreaks at meat plants.

Myles Leslie, associate director of research with the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy, said it may be necessary for all three plants to be closed and completely redesigned to keep workers safe while still producing food.

“We may need to completely shut, hit the reset button, redo the production line so that everyone is two metres apart,” Leslie said. “Production will have to go down. But back online at 50 per cent is a whole lot better than shut down at zero per cent, or 100 per cent with everybody sick.”