Tyson raises bonuses, boosts health coverage

Tyson Foods said Wednesday it would double its bonuses for hourly plant workers and truckers to $1,000 per person during the coronavirus pandemic.

The company is also offering better health coverage and stepping up efforts to combat the spread of coronavirus in its meat and poultry plants.

The announcements were made after President Donald Trump signed an executive order late Tuesday to keep processing plants operational despite thousands of workers testing positive for the virus. The swift spread of the virus among workers has led to several plant closings. Farm industry groups backed the order as several unions raised worker safety concerns.

As a “thank you” to the company’s front-line workers and truckers, Tyson said it would spend $120 million on bonuses for more than 100,000 workers. They can expect to see the first payment of $500 in early May and a second payment in July. Meatpackers have been offering bonuses and raises to hourly workers as outbreaks occur in the nation’s beef, chicken and pork plants.

“We have ample supply but there was a bottleneck caused by this whole pandemic and it was potentially pretty serious,” Trump said

Wednesday during an Oval Office meeting with Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards. Trump signed an executive order Tuesday night, citing the Defense Production Act, which allows Tyson and other meatpacking companies to continue production during the crisis.

The pandemic has disrupted the nation’s food system, causing restaurants, schools and other businesses to close. Farmers and ranchers are taking losses as some meatpacking plants close indefinitely. Fewer products are reaching grocery store shelves because of it.

Tyson, JBS, Smithfield and other meatpackers have said that they are doing their part to keep workers safe from the virus such as deep cleaning the plants, using clear plastic dividers along the production lines and supplying masks for protection. But the workers, who often stand next to one another doing repetitive jobs for hours, are worried.

“Our plants must remain operational so that we can supply food to our families in America,” Chairman John Tyson said in a letter published over the weekend in several news outlets, including the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. “This is a delicate balance because Tyson Foods places team member safety as our top priority.”

Along with social distancing and added cleaning measures, Tyson has installed more than 150 infrared walkthrough temperature scanners and deployed nonmedical masks to workers two weeks ago. Tyson said Wednesday that it would begin screening workers for coughing and shortness of breath, assign monitors to help enforce social-distancing measures and require workers to wear company-supplied masks.

The $1,000 in bonuses depend on attendance, but workers who are unable to work because of illness or child care will continue to qualify, the company said.

More than 20 meatpacking plants have closed at some point in the past two months in coronavirus outbreaks, according to labor unions. More than 3,000 workers in the meat industry have been sickened from the coronavirus and 17 have died, said Debbie Berkowitz, program director for worker safety and health with the National Employment Law Project. Tyson closed three meatpacking plants last week, including its largest pork processing plant in Iowa.

“Instead of requiring meatpacking companies to implement safe practices, the president prefers to shield these corporations from responsibility for putting workers’ lives in danger,” Berkowitz said in response to the executive order. Federal guidelines for meatpacking workers and employers were issued Sunday, about two months after the president called for a national emergency, but unions are pushing for mandatory requirements.

“We’re going to have a report on that probably this afternoon,” Trump said Wednesday when asked what the government would do to protect meat and poultry workers when they go back to work. “We’re going to have a good form of protection. They’ve got to be very careful as to who is going into the plant and the quarantine is going to be very strong and we’re going to make people better when they have a problem.”

Critics don’t see it that way. Jason Walsh, executive director of the BlueGreen Alliance, said in a statement that the president is using the order to “try to force workers back on the job in unsafe conditions. It doesn’t get more wrong than that.”