SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO.com) — Two local meatpacking employees say they and their colleagues in the food industry should be a priority for getting vaccinated against the coronavirus.
Antonio Jimenez, who works at JBS in Worthington, Minnesota, and Sandra Sibert, who works at Smithfield in Sioux Falls, said they are concerned about getting or spreading COVID-19.
Sibert says Smithfield workers in Sioux Falls are still “packed like tuna in a can” on the processing line.
Jimenez says essential food workers like him who keep America fed should get the vaccine now.
Both appeared in an online news conference put on by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union.
Union President Marc Perrone says food workers are still dying from the coronavirus. He says they also deserve hazard pay because of the dangers they face and the importance of their jobs to the nation’s food chain.
