Workplace safety failures during pandemic cost lives at Cargill: report

A sweeping independent review has concluded that Alberta's response to Canada's largest single COVID-19 outbreak was a systemic failure that placed industry continuity above human life – findings that carry serious implications about occupational health governance and the protection of vulnerable workers.

The 199-page report, titled Essential and Expendable: How Alberta's COVID-19 Response Failed Cargill Workers, was released Monday by the Parkland Institute, a non-partisan research centre at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. Its authors – Jason Foster, director of the Parkland Institute and a human resources and labour relations professor at Athabasca University in Athabasca, Alta.; and Sean Tucker, a professor of occupational health and safety at the University of Regina – compiled the first independent investigation of what became North America's largest single-site pandemic outbreak, drawing on freedom-of-information records, publicly available documents, and expert interviews.

More than 950 workers – nearly half the workforce at Cargill Inc.'s beef-packing plant in High River, Alta., – tested positive for COVID-19 in April and May 2020, according to the Parkland Institute report. Eighteen were hospitalized. Two workers died: Bui Thi Hiep, 67, a 23-year Cargill veteran, and Benito Quesada, 51, a shop steward with the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 401. Secondary spread in the surrounding community caused hundreds more infections, four additional deaths, and the outbreak was subsequently linked to at least 22 other outbreaks — including some at long-term care homes where contacts of plant employees worked — the report says.

"Both lost their lives to COVID-19 and, ultimately, to Alberta's catastrophic failure to place worker safety above industry interests," the report states.

A health and safety system that let workers down

The report's most pointed findings concern the conduct of Alberta Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) and Alberta Health Services (AHS). Both bodies, the authors conclude, failed to deploy the enforcement mechanisms already available to them. According to the report, AHS was notified of the first positive case on April 3, 2020. Within days, UFCW Local 401 had written to management demanding additional protections for workers; by April 12, union president Tom Hesse had formally demanded the suspension of operations. Neither demand was acted on, said the report.

The report found that internal government emails indicated that by April 10, 2020, AHS manager Sarah Nunn – the lead on the Cargill file – had noted that "more drastic action" may need to be taken, but "there was no action." A virtual OHS inspection conducted on April 15 lasted just 30 minutes, with the officer failing to assess all areas of the plant or speak directly with front-line workers. Despite several hundred workers already being ill, the inspection resulted in no compliance orders, according to the Parkland Institute report. It wasn’t until April 20 that Cargill itself voluntarily suspended operations – a two-week halt the report’s authors argue came far too late.

"Workers were led to believe that the workplace was safe, that public health had based their assessment on evidence, and clearly that wasn't the case," Tucker said in an interview with the Globe and Mail.

The sequence of events highlights why Canadian leaders must own safety, not just delegate it, to ensure a safe and healthy workforce.

The workforce that paid the price

The report places significant weight on the demographics of the Cargill workforce. The majority of plant employees were recent immigrants to Canada or temporary foreign workers, many without English proficiency and with limited alternative income sources. As designated essential workers during the pandemic, they were ineligible for the federal Emergency Response Benefit at the time, according to the Globe and Mail.

Cargill offered a one-time $500 attendance bonus and a temporary $2-per-hour wage increase during the early months of the pandemic, according to the Parkland Institute report – incentives that, the authors suggest, may have encouraged symptomatic workers to remain on the job. The plant also continued operating under an "essential service" designation that exempted it from public health restrictions on physical distancing and gathering sizes, the Globe and Mail reported.

"The tragedy occurred in a political environment that openly and enthusiastically prioritized economic growth over the health and safety of a largely invisible and vulnerable group of workers," the authors concluded.

This finding draws a direct line between workforce demographics and occupational risk, and the report suggests that standard compliance frameworks may not provide adequate protection for workers who face language barriers, economic precarity, or precarious immigration status.

Recommendations to improve accountability, role of OHS

The report's 36 recommendations span institutional accountability, legislative reform and regulatory restructuring. Among the most significant: a public apology from AHS, OHS and the Alberta government to Cargill workers and their families; amendments to the province’s Public Health Act and the Occupational Health and Safety Act to confirm that OHS leads the workplace response during a public health emergency; an Auditor General review of OHS internal processes; and the creation of a standing list of essential services to define worker rights in future health crises.

"COVID will not be the last pandemic, and we can always learn from our mistakes," Tucker told the Globe and Mail. "It will probably open old wounds but maybe this will eventually lead to some closure."

For Canadian HR leaders, the Cargill case is a reminder that how HR leaders can build proactive pandemic preparedness frameworks can’t rest on the assumption that regulators will intervene when workers need protection, and must pay attention to the data that can show the real risks to employee safety.