Meat plant bosses bet on virus numbers: suit

Tyson Foods suspended several managers at an Iowa pork plant Thursday as it probes whether they bet on how many workers would get infected during the coronavirus outbreak.

The son of a Tyson Foods employee who died of coronavirus has filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against the manufacturer, claiming that plant bigwigs were making the warped wager.

Isidro Fernandez, who worked at the Waterloo plant, died April 26 after contracting COVID-19. His son, Oscar, claims the Tyson Foods bosses engaged in “fraudulent misrepresentations, gross negligence and incorrigible, willful and wanton disregard for worker safety” that eventually led to his father’s death.

Tyson CEO Dean Banks said the company has retained the law firm Covington & Burling to conduct an investigation into the betting claims.

Anyone allegedly involved has been suspended without pay.

More than 1,000 workers at the plant, about one-third of the staff, have tested positive, according to the Black Hawk County Health Department. Fernandez was one of at least six deaths.

By late March or early April, “Tyson Foods executives and supervisors or managers at the Waterloo Facility were aware that COVID-19 was spreading through the plant,” according to the lawsuit. But it never provided employees with personal protective equipment, including masks, as advised by the Centers for Disease Control, or insisted on social distancing on the floor.

On April 10, Black Hawk County Sheriff Tony Thompson visited the facility and advised Tyson Foods to shut the plant down, but the company refused.The plant finally closed on April 22.