The Legislature narrowly approved a motion to delay further consideration of a bill requiring meatpacking plants to keep in place basic COVID-19 protections for their employees for the next year.
Opponents of a bill (LB241) sponsored by Omaha Sen. Tony Vargas successfully used a procedural motion to prevent the measure from coming to a vote in second-round debate Tuesday.
LB241 would have enacted "basic guardrails" for meatpacking workers, including re-configuring spaces to allow for 6 feet of distancing, and requiring companies to continue to provide personal protective equipment and hand sanitizer and regularly take temperatures and test for COVID-19.
Vargas, who represents South Omaha, a largely Latino district where many meatpacking employees live, said the bill was pared down to be "more reasonable with what I consider pragmatic aspects."
People are also reading…
Sen. John Lowe of Kearney introduced a bracket motion to delay further consideration of LB241 until June 10 — well after the Legislature is expected to adjourn for the 90-day session — saying lawmakers should wait with the end of the pandemic in sight.
Almost exclusively used as a tool of the legislative filibuster, Lowe instead painted his bracket motion as an offer to compromise with Vargas by keeping the bill alive and able to be brought back next year, if necessary.
"We can find out where we're at with COVID when we come back in January," Lowe said. "We're finally getting our life back. And now we want to continue what we're going through the last year and a half?"
Vargas called Lowe's motion "unfriendly," and said he had already waited a year in order to bring LB241 to the floor for consideration.
Delaying discussion of the bill further, especially when the Legislature has advanced COVID liability protections for businesses, sent "a very clear message" to meatpacking workers, Vargas said, many of whom are minorities.
"When I hear that 'the lobby thinks this,' my first inclination is: 'What about the people?'" Vargas asked. "What about the individual workers who are working right now as we speak? What about the loved ones of those workers?
"This is to make sure there is a balanced approach to it," he added. "This has nothing to do with whether or not we are targeting an industry."
Other backers of Vargas' proposal, including Sens. Ray Aguilar of Grand Island and Tom Brandt of Plymouth — both of whom represent districts that employ a large number of meatpacking workers — said the bill was not as onerous as opponents made it out to be.
Aguilar said many meatpacking plants already were in compliance with Vargas' bill, and said without requirements from the state, many would drop those protections, perhaps too soon, in order to speed production and increase profits.
Added Brandt: "Safety is not an unnecessary burden."
But opponents said as Nebraska and the U.S. emerge from the pandemic, the Legislature should look to cut more red tape for businesses rather than keep regulations in place, and said Vargas' bill imposed a one-size-fits-all approach on the state's meatpacking industry.
"It's foreign to me that the government should be the solution to everything," said Sen. Steve Erdman of Bayard.
Sen. Joni Albrecht of Thurston, whose district includes the Tyson plant in Dakota City, said it was in the companies' interests to keep workers safe and healthy.
Albrecht read a letter from Tyson that outlined the steps the company had taken a year ago to bolster COVID testing for employees, and the consulting done with the University of Nebraska Medical Center and other entities about how to safely continue production.
After about an hour and a half of debate, the Legislature approved Lowe's bracket motion on a 25-18 vote, ending debate on LB241 for the year.