MEDIA ADVISORY: Oct. 29, 2025
CONTACT:Emily Jo Wharry, UCLA Labor Center, emilyjowharry@g.ucla.edu, (310) 617-5609
Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2025 at 9:00 AM (RSVP via Zoom)
UCLA to Release New Report on Wage Theft, Labor Violations in the Los Angeles Food Meatpacking and Food Processing Industry
Press conference to unveil new data on dangerous working conditions, substandard food safety outcomes, and the structural exploitation of a uniquely vulnerable population of workers.
LOS ANGELES — On Oct. 29, UCLA Labor Center researchers will release a new report on Los Angeles County’s meatpacking and food processing industry. Authored in partnership with LAANE and El Centro, the report analyzes how decades of corporate consolidation and deregulation have reshaped the local industry, resulting in systemic practices that undermine workers’ rights, health, and safety.
The data — based on interviews and focus groups with 47 workers, as well as a comprehensive analysis of industry and workforce data, including census and Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) records — reveals:
- Workers in both meatpacking and poultry processing regularly experience numerous forms of wage theft, egregious and systemic labor violations, and a pervasive culture of verbal abuse from supervisors.
- Workers contend with dangerous working conditions, especially relating to their ability to meet unrealistic production quotas that require impossible or unsafe operating speeds.
- Staffing agencies insulate employers from scrutiny and oversight and sustain a class of long-term employees in “perma-temp” labor arrangements with little career advancement.
- Substandard working conditions are directly linked to substandard food safety outcomes.
WHAT:Press conference with a researcher, public health expert, and worker organizer about new findings on the Los Angeles County meatpacking and food processing industry.
WHEN: Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2025 from 9:00 AM–9:50 AM
WHERE: Press conference via Zoom. Click here to RSVP.
WHO:Featured speakers include:
- Brian Justie, PhD:Report co-author and researcher at the UCLA Labor Center
- Alice Berliner — Director of LA County Dept. of Public Health’s Office of Worker Health &Safety
- Edgar Reyes — Public Health Council organizer at the Center for Worker Training and Leadership
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About the UCLA Labor Center:
Established in 1964, the UCLA Labor Center believes that a public university belongs to the people and advances cutting-edge research, education, and service guided by our core values:economic equity, racial and immigrant justice, and worker power and solidarity. Through our signature approaches and methodology that employ research justice, narrative storytelling, student and leader-to-movement pathways, and culturally and racially responsive evaluation, we partner with workers, unions, worker centers, students, and impacted communities to advance economic justice across California, the nation and globally. Learn more:https://labor.ucla.edu/
About the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE):
Combining dynamic research, innovative public policy, and strategic organizing of broad alliances, LAANE promotes a new economic approach based on good jobs, thriving communities, and a healthy environment. For the past 25 years, LAANE has been at the forefront of Los Angeles’ progressive movement, transforming conditions in key industries and improving the lives of hundreds of thousands of working families in southern California. Learn more:https://laane.org/
About El Centro:
El Centro de Entrenamiento y Liderazgo Para Trabajadores organizes to build a society with just food systems, where all have access to ethically and sustainably produced food that does well by workers, is healthy and healing, and defends the interests and well-being of the next generation and the planet. El Centro believes that those who produce and consume food should be at the center of our food systems.
