Tyson didn't provide employees with protective gear, didn't make them space out, didn't provide access to extra cleaning time. All while actively lobbying the white house for lawsuit protections.
Now 1000 sick and at least 3 dead.
On April 10, Tony Thompson, the sheriff for Black Hawk County in Iowa, visited the giant Tyson Foods pork plant in Waterloo. What he saw, he said, “shook me to the core.”
Workers, many of them immigrants, were crowded elbow to elbow as they broke down hog carcasses zipping by on a conveyor belt. The few who had face coverings wore a motley assortment of bandannas, painters’ masks or even sleep masks stretched around their mouths. Some had masks hanging around their necks.
Sheriff Thompson and other local officials lobbied Tyson to close the plant, worried about a coronavirus outbreak. In an April 14 phone call, county health officials asked Tyson to shut down temporarily, Tyson said. But Tyson was “less than cooperative,” said the sheriff, who supervises the county’s coronavirus response, and Iowa’s governor declined to shut the facility.
“Waterloo Tyson is running,” the company said in a text message to employees on April 17. “Thank you team members! WE ARE PROUD OF YOU!”
Five days later, the plant was closed. Tyson said the reason was “worker absenteeism” as well as a spike in cases and community concerns. As of Thursday, the county health department had recorded 1,031 coronavirus infections among Tyson employees — more than a third of the work force. Some are on ventilators. Three have died, according to Tyson.
As high-level executives lobbied the White House to help protect Tyson from lawsuits, the company was failing to provide adequate safety equipment to Waterloo workers and refusing the requests of local officials to close the plant, according to more than two dozen interviews with plant employees, immigrant-rights advocates, doctors, lawyers and government officials.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/10/business/economy/coronavirus-tyson-plant-iowa.html#click=https://t.co/XIbluxvj5PEdited by MrBlueSky at 15:29:14 on 05/10/20