Life And Death Of The American Worker by Alice Driver

This book chronicles the worker experience at the Tyson plant in Arkansas, but it could be about any meat packing plant. The stories here are very specific, telling about specific workers and their families, but as a health care provider in Iowa, where the governor declared meat packing plant employees to be essential workers, where there was absolutely no effort to impose safety or distancing in the work place, and in April of 2020 over 700 employees at a meat packing plant in eastern Iowa tested positive for COVID. Many were hospitalized and quite a few died. They were largely middle aged and immigrants. The same is true at Tyson. The employer controls all aspects of the supply chain, and they control all aspects of the employee work experience, including health assessment and maintenance. There is nothing that is independent, so when there is a chemical spill, the company controls the narrative, and the workers have no ability to be treated appropriately, independently, or fairly. It is exactly what you would expect and deeply disturbing at the same time.