Tyson Executives Bet on COVID-19 Spread in Unsafe Plant

All of this was justified - by Tyson and its enablers in the GOP - as a necessary, regrettable part of keeping America fed during the lockdown. But Tyson's breakneck meat-packing wasn't primarily domestic: they were serving the Chinese market.

By Cory Doctorow / Pluralistic.net

Remember last April, when US meatpacking giants like Tyson were the epicenter of runaway superspreader events that slaughtered the poor, precarious, racialized workers who toiled under brutal and unsafe conditions?

One of the hardest-hit was Tyson's Waterloo, IA plant (the largest meat packing plant in America), where workers were denied PPE, forced to work without social distancing, and where more than 1,000 of them contracted covid. Many died.

One of the dead is Isidro Fernandez. In a wrongful death suit, his lawyers revealed details of Tyson's abuse of its workers that shock the conscience, like the fact that manager Tom Hart ran a betting pool on how many workers would contract covid.

The suit also claims senior manager John Casey told supervisors that they were required to report for work even if they had symptoms, calling covid a "glorified flu." He forced a supervisor to cancel a testing appointment, saying "We all have symptoms - you have a job to do."

A worker who was so sick he vomited on the line was ordered back to work the next day.

As conditions in the plant deteriorated, Tyson managers stopped visiting the floor altogether in a bid to protect themselves. Instead, they delegated to inexperienced supervisors.

They also told workers they would only be eligible for a $500 "thank you bonus" if they reported for every shift they were scheduled to work, regardless of whether they were sick and contagious.

All of this was justified - by Tyson and its enablers in the GOP - as a necessary, regrettable part of keeping America fed during the lockdown. But Tyson's breakneck meat-packing wasn't primarily domestic: they were serving the Chinese market.

Chinese meat-packers had largely been mothballed to spare workers from the virus; as a result, the company was able to increase its exports to China by 600% during Q1-2020.

But this isn't the story that Tyson's execs told Governor Kim Reynolds when they lobbied for exemptions from liability for the employees they maimed and murdered during the same period - they claimed it was all patriotic zeal to feed America.

The case has moved to federal court, thanks to Trump's invocation of the Defense Production Act, which ordered Tyson to stay open during the lockdown.