Why Are Frito-Lays Employees Working 'Suicide Shifts' On The Job?

The Guardian, By Indigo Olivier, July 23, 2021.

- Workers are now entering their third week on strike to demand better conditions. -

Since 5 July, hundreds of striking workers at a Frito-Lay plant in Topeka, Kansas, have drawn attention to the Dickensian conditions workers have been subjected to in order to produce some of the biggest brand name chips in the United States, including Fritos, Cheetos, Doritos, Lay’s, Ruffles, Funyuns and Tostitos.

Workers have publicly aired a list of grievances ranging from stagnant wages, high turnover rates and a lack of hazard pay during the pandemic to 84-hour workweeks, warehouses in triple-digit heat with no air conditioning, months on end without a day off, and so-called “suicide shifts” where workers are only off the clock for eight hours before having to come back in.

As one Frito-Lay worker wrote in an op-ed for the Topeka Capital-Journal, “This storm has been brewing for years.” The worker describes “iron-fisted management” that has forced employees to continue working through the smoke and fumes of a fire, the loss of a father, a “deep freeze” cold front, years of inflation with cost-of-living increases as low as 20 cents, and the on-the-job death of a co-worker.

In an interview with Vice, Mark McCarter, a 59-year-old palletizer and union steward who has been working at the facility since he was 19, described one instance a few years ago where a co-worker died on the line and the company had his body moved to the side without stopping production. “It seems like I go to one funeral a year for someone who’s had a heart attack at work or someone who went home to their barn and shot themselves in the head or hung themselves,” said McCarter...

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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jul/23/why-are-frito-lays-workers-working-suicide-shifts-on-the-job