Workers at family-run Lexington County farm test positive for COVID-19
This story was updated at 5:30 p.m. to include information from SCDHEC.
Workers at a major Lexington County produce farm have tested positive for the coronavirus, the company confirmed Thursday.
Several employees of family-owned WP Rawl farms have contracted COVID-19, according to spokesperson Christine Jackson. The Pelion farm is run by Walter P. Rawl & Sons Inc. and employs about 650 people, according to Jackson.
She did not specify how many workers have tested positive but said it is “fewer than 10” since the pandemic began. WP Rawl grows and processes produce, and its parent company has a large distribution network outside of South Carolina.
The South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control said July 10 that it knew of one COVID-19 case associated with the Rawl Farms processing facilities.
“We learned of this case utilizing our traditional surveillance methods, meaning following up with positive cases through confidential interviews,” DHEC spokesperson Laura Renwick said in an email on Friday.
Packing plants are considered prime spots for the spread of the illness among workers. Some facilities rely on production lines in which workers are often bunched closely together and pushed to process a certain number of animal carcasses, produce items or food products in short periods of time. Workers who get infected outside the plants can bring the virus in and infect others.
More than 100 workers at about a dozen meat-packing plants in South Carolina have tested positive for coronavirus, The State reported last week.
WP Rawl has a daily “robust food safety and sanitation protocol” and has been abiding by workplace safety guidelines from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and the state Department of Health and Environmental Control, Jackson said. The guidelines recommend infected employees quarantine for at least 10 days from the onset of symptoms or until they have no fever for three days without the use of fever-reducing medicines and their other symptoms have improved. Close contacts or those who live in the same home as coronavirus-positive workers are also supposed to self-isolate.
The rules don’t require workers to have a negative COVID-19 test before returning to work, and that is the policy WP Rawl follows, Jackson said.
The company does not offer paid sick leave for workers with COVID-19 but has dealt with absences on “a case-by-case basis,” she said. WP Rawl also created a task force to implement workplace safety guidance and implement contact-tracing, according to Jackson. She did not respond to questions about whether the task force was made up of Rawl employees or run by an outside company.
No workers have filed complaints about working conditions with the state Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation, the agency told The State Thursday. However, WP Rawl has faced complaints of unfair treatment of employees in the past.
In 2019, the U.S. Department of Labor forced the farm to pay back workers for overtime after an investigation found WP Rawl had violated federal law. The company paid $101,572 to 408 employees for not following the Fair Labor Standards Act, which protects workers by requiring pay for any labor done before and after scheduled shifts.
The Rawls also came under scrutiny in 2016, when Walter P. Rawl & Sons’ parent company, HW Group, was fined $1 million by a federal judge for employing hundreds of undocumented workers.
Sammy Fretwell contributed to this report.
This story was originally published July 10, 2020 at 10:22 AM.