Paro en Smithfield expone muertes masivas en plantas cárnicas estadounidenses

A maintenance worker named Patou Mpinda, 44 years old and a Congolese immigrant, died during the night shift at the Smithfield Foods pork processing plant in Monmouth, Illinois, around 2:31 in the morning. The company has not disclosed which machine was involved, what task he was performing, or whether safety lockout procedures had been followed. The county coroner believes the death is work-related, though a final determination is pending.

When the day shift arrived at 7:30 that Tuesday morning, hundreds of workers gathered in the cafeteria to learn that a colleague had died. Some wept openly. Others confronted plant management, demanding to know why they were being asked to work at all. According to accounts from workers present, management ordered production to begin anyway. African immigrant workers then organized a spontaneous walkout—approximately 100 people left the plant without waiting for union authorization or corporate permission. Smithfield announced afterward that workers could leave without penalty, but only after the collective action had already started. The plant is not unionized.

The death at Monmouth is not an isolated incident in an industry that operates at the margins of safety. Across the United States, a worker dies from a traumatic injury every 104 minutes. Federal data recorded 5,070 such deaths in 2024 alone, and the AFL-CIO estimates an additional 135,000 deaths from occupational diseases in 2023. In just the past four months, eleven workers were killed in an explosion at Horizon Biofuels in Texas; two died in an explosion at a Pennsylvania facility; a 33-year-old was crushed by machinery at an autoparts plant in Kentucky; and a 63-year-old died at a UPS facility in Missouri just thirteen days before his planned retirement.

Smithfield's own safety record at Monmouth reveals a pattern of violations and reduced penalties. In February, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration cited the plant for a serious lockout-tagout violation after two employees cleaning a drill were exposed to amputation risk. The agency initially imposed a fine of $14,188, then reduced it to $9,931.60. Similar serious violations in 2023 and 2025 also resulted in reduced fines. At Smithfield's larger facility in Tar Heel, North Carolina—the world's largest pork processing plant—the pattern repeats. On January 10, Abundio Villa Miranda, 43, fell approximately 25 feet into an area where pigs are stunned with gas. He left two children, ages 10 and 14. Investigators found four serious violations related to fall protection and confined spaces, and Smithfield negotiated the fine down from $51,100 to $35,770. Villa Miranda was one of three workers who died at Tar Heel in ten months. The presence of the United Food and Commercial Workers union, which has held a contract at the plant since 2009, prevented none of these deaths.

The Congolese community in Monmouth provides a substantial portion of the plant's workforce, as do immigrants and refugees throughout the meat industry. The Trump administration's campaign of raids, detention camps, and mass deportation is designed to terrorize this sector of the working class into silence, thereby disciplining the entire labor force. That these workers defied management in a small Illinois town demonstrates a growing current of anger and resistance.

The meat industry sits among America's most dangerous sectors. In April 2020, as COVID-19 swept through plants including Monmouth, which was forced to close temporarily, Trump invoked the Defense Production Act to keep facilities operating. Hundreds of meat industry workers died. The administration is now moving to eliminate remaining limits on production line speed. Last spring, 3,800 workers at the JBS beef plant in Greeley, Colorado, conducted the largest meat industry strike in more than 60 years. Mostly immigrants, they remained on strike for three weeks against poverty wages, accelerated work pace, and unsafe conditions. The UFCW Local 7 allowed JBS to divert cattle to another union plant in Texas, then ordered strikers back without a contract, imposing an agreement barely 30 cents better than the company's initial offer.

The Monmouth action points toward broader potential. The region along the Illinois-Iowa border has seen repeated eruptions of open opposition. In nearby Quad Cities, John Deere workers were among 10,000 nationally who last month rejected a contract extension proposal. They are determined to reverse 1,600 job cuts and concessions imposed since the United Auto Workers betrayed their 2021 strike. In Joslin, Illinois, Tyson announced on August 13 that it would close its meat plant, eliminating roughly 2,500 jobs. Six hundred people filled an emergency community meeting. The UFCW Local 431 has sought to channel anger toward appeals to corporate and government officials while boasting of years of "partnership" with Tyson.

The investigation into Mpinda's death cannot be left to Smithfield or to OSHA. Workers at Smithfield should organize an independent grassroots investigation, gathering testimony from coworkers and production and maintenance records, consulting trusted safety experts to establish how Mpinda died and what corporate practices produced those conditions. They should build a workplace committee in Monmouth and call on workers at Tar Heel, Joslin, and throughout the meat industry to do the same. Their demands should include worker control over line speed, staffing, and maintenance; full access to safety records; the right to stop work without loss of pay; and protection for any worker reporting a hazard. Linked through the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees, such committees can prepare coordinated action across companies, industries, and national borders. A global movement of workers is developing. In recent weeks, protests against soaring fuel and food prices—driven up by American war against Iran—have spread from Guatemala, where truckers blocked roads and indigenous organizations marched on Congress, to Syria, the Philippines, and Portugal. Volkswagen plans to destroy up to 100,000 jobs while Germany conducts its largest military buildup since Hitler. In Turkey, factory occupations continue and miners fight unpaid wages and arrests. At National Steel Car in Hamilton, Ontario, where three workers died between 2020 and 2022, 1,200 workers have struck against unsafe conditions and a deadly piecework system, with a rank-and-file committee coordinating support with railroad workers across North America. Postal workers in Springfield, Massachusetts, have formed a committee and called for coordination with workers in the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, and Australia. The workers of Smithfield, acting on their own initiative, have shown the power residing in collective action. That initiative must now be organized, expanded, and directed toward the socialist reorganization of economic life.