Life and Death of the American Worker: The Immigrants Taking on America's Largest Meatpacking Company

by Alice Driver

Winner of the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award, an explosive exposé of the toxic labor practices at the largest meatpacking company in America and the immigrant workers who had the courage to fight back.

On June 27, 2011, a deadly chemical accident took place inside the Tyson Foods chicken processing plant in Springdale, Arkansas, where the company is headquartered. The company quickly covered it up although the spill left their employees injured, sick, and terrified. Over the years, Arkansas-based reporter Alice Driver was able to gain the trust of the immigrant workers who survived the accident. They rewarded her persistence by giving her total access to their lives.

Having spent hours in their kitchens and accompanying them to doctor’s appointments, Driver has memorialized in these pages the dramatic lives of husband and wife Plácido and Angelina, who liked to spend weekends planting seeds from their native El Salvador in their garden; father and son Martín and Gabriel, who migrated from Mexico at different times and were trying to patch up their relationship; and many other immigrants who survived the chemical accident in Springdale that day.

During the course of Alice’s reporting, the COVID-19 pandemic struck the community, and the workers were forced to continue production in unsafe conditions, watching their colleagues get sick and die one by one. These essential workers, many of whom only speak Spanish and some of whom are illiterate—all of whom suffer the health consequences of Tyson’s negligence—somehow found the strength and courage to organize and fight back, culminating in a lawsuit against Tyson Foods, the largest meatpacking company in America.

Richly detailed, fiercely honest, and deeply reported, Life and Death of the American Worker will forever change the way we think about the people who prepare our food.

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, Labor, Audiobook, Social Issues, Society, Law

272 pages, Hardcover

First published September 3, 2024

Reviews

[Sunny Lu · Rating 4 out of 5]

A crucial journalistic accounting of how brutal the meatpacking industry is. Tyson should be sued out of existence genuinely. Workers’ rights and unions for immigrants, especially undocumented workers, have long and difficult fights ahead of them. The pain and heartbreak and loss of these workers are expertly documented in this book, but the conclusion felt a bit lacking to me. Because the problem isn’t just meat consumption, and the subsidization the meat industry faces, but rather the amerikkkan empire I fear. But again, there are so often Marxism shaped holes in so much journalism, which is always what my problem with nonfiction is

[Jordan Steyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

wonderful reporting

[Mallory (onmalsshelf) Bartel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a tough read. I remember seeing issues with Tyson on the news during the toughest part of the pandemic, but I didn't pay too much attention. These are important stories to be told and I'm sure there are similar stories at other companies.

I do think this read more like a very long form article and that because it read that way, it felt like it could've been edited down.

I will definitely be recommending this to anyone looking for a book on the life of the American worker that shows the dark side of America.

Thanks to Atria for the copy.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just when you thought you knew how evil Tyson Foods is, you read this book and find out even more reasons to hate them. Alice Driver spent four years interviewing current and former employees of Tyson meatpacking plants, specifically about the impact of COVID on these workers. You probably heard about high COVID rates in meatpacking plants during peak-COVID, and you probably also heard about the Trump administration's executive order to keep meatpacking plants open in spite of any state-level COVID restrictions. What you didn't hear about in the media was for the workers Driver interviewed, many of them had been working in a Tyson plant in 2011 when there was a chemical spill. That spill caused a lot of health issues for the workers most directly exposed, in particular lung issues. So when COVID came around, a lot of these workers who already had compromised health from the chemical spill almost immediately began dying of COVID. And Tyson, like any monopoly dependent on low-paid workers, first tried to ignore COVID, then later decided that every employee would be required to be vaccinated against the illness they had told their employees didn't exist. Many of the employees at these meatpacking plants are immigrants (some legal, some not) and many either don't speak much English and/or are illiterate. Tyson definitely preys on this demographic and preys on the fear of these workers to get them to comply and work in horrible conditions even before COVID came around. The book also covers a class action lawsuit that was brought against a specific plant in Arkansas - unfortunately, the case ends up being dismissed which was a downer of a way to end an already hard book. While this is not an easy read, it's an important read. THIS is the real cost of food. Anyone who buys chicken at the grocery store should be required to read this book. Is Tyson who you want to give your hard-earned money to? My suggestion is to find yourself a local farmer who's doing things on a smaller scale to support.

Some quotes that outraged me:

"Similarly, in addition to employing undocumented workers, Tyson also exploits vulnerable prison populations. For example, some nonviolent criminals facing jail time in Oklahoma are offered an alternative to prison...those who know the programs call them 'the Chicken Farm' as they require people to work at Tyson or other meatpacking companies, where they are paid little or nothing." (p. 13-14) [Maybe this could be a better deterrent than jail time]

"[Tyson] was at a loss for years about what to do with the gizzards since customers weren't fond of them. In the early 1990s, Tyson began to sell gizzard patties to prisons. Don Tyson, the company's chairman at the time, described imprisoned people as a 'captive market' for gizzard burgers." (p. 23) [Another deterrent for jail time]

"On March 3, 2020, Carlos Lynn, thirty-nine, was sanitizing a fifty-foot chicken chiller at a Tyson plant in Baker Hill, Alabama. Lynn, a Black man from Alabama, worked for Packers Sanitation Services, Inc., which paid formerly incarcerated men like him $12-$15/house to do dangerous sanitation work. [While cleaning, the machine was accidentally turned on decapitating Lynn.]...The following day...the plant required all workers to sign a legal document stating that they understood the risks of sanitizing the chicken chiller, and, if they were decapitated, they accepted responsibility for such an accident since they had been warned of the risk beforehand." (p. 29-30)

"'All the waste from the debone area, the skeleton, the skin, the neck, the hip bone - all of that is ground up to make nuggets which have almost no meat in them,' [Victor] said. Nuggets, a product Tyson created for McDonald's, helped transform Tyson from a small-town business into a global empire. The nugget recipe involved forty-pound frozen blocks of chicken parts: three blocks of chicken breast; two of ground skeleton mixed with blood, necks, and other bits; and one of chicken skin and fat." (p. 41) [Doesn't that sound appetizing...]

"In the 1970s, when more women were entering the workforce, and fast-food empires were growing, Don [Tyson] saw an opportunity to sell packaged chicken products. Under his watch, Tyson Foods invented McDonald's Chicken Nuggets and the Burger King chicken sandwich, among thousands of other prepared food items. At that time, chicken was unpopular, so the company had to convince restaurant chains that it could be packaged as a healthier option than hamburgers." (p. 47)

"In 2021, in OSHA needed to inspect all of the meatpacking facilities in the US, it would take them 165 years. And the average fine for a potentially life-threatening hazard that year was $3,700. It was cheaper to pay the occasional fine than to keep machinery, chemicals, and labor conditions safe for workers." (p. 53)

"He mentioned a program Tyson had recently launched called Helping Hands, which encouraged workers to donate part of their paycheck to help other Tyson workers affected by COVID...'It's as if they are making fun of us,' he added, noting that a company that makes billions of dollars should not ask workers to contribute to covering the cost of COVID infections." (p. 118)

"During the pandemic, Arkansas prisons and Tyson facilities shared a unique distinction - they were the sites with the most significant coronavirus outbreaks in the country...Despite the rapid spread of the virus and CDC recommendations, prisons and Tyson facilities lobbied to keep workers in the fields and in the factories. Tyson operates in four states that allow prisoners to be forced to labor without compensation: Arkansas, Georgia, Alabama, and Texas. Tyson employs prisoners via work release programs that place prisoners at various companies." (p. 184)

"While waiting for robotics to catch up with industry needs, Tyson Foods began to diversify, investing in meat products that were less labor intensive. In 2016 and 2017, Tyson Foods invested $34 million in the plant-based meat company, Beyond Meat. In 2022, Tyson announced that it would contribute to a $400 million investment in Upside Foods, a lab-grown meat company. Although many assumed that meatpacking companies would see lab-grown meat as a threat, the same profitable subsidies underpinning the meatpacking industry are flowing into lab-grown meat. The tech industry is selling lab-grown meat as if it were revolutionary, but it is simply an extension of the status quo in which the US continues to subsidize cheap and plentiful meat. Lab-grown meat is also a proprietary product, once again placing the food system in the hands of a few companies." (p. 204)

[Lynn · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a very important story but the book is not well written. The author repeats herself over and over. She jumps back and forth in time and between different sets of characters for no clear reason. With skillful editing this could have made an excellent long form article in the New Yorker or the Atlantic. In book form I’m not sure how many people will persevere to the end.

[Manisha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Listened to the audiobook.

I truly appreciate books that humble me and remind me how blessed I am to live a relatively stress free life.

FUCK TYSON

[Hibaq]

feels weird to rate so i won't but really enlightening. very quick read that covers the biggest parts of a stories like this: loss of human life, dignity and wages. also lightly touches on how the cycle feeds itself through unwaged incarcerated people, threats towards the undocumented and how corps can buy out whole towns and sections of government. deeply saddening. fuck tyson foods!

[betsy · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 rounded up. this was a tough read. the book chronicles the abhorrent working conditions for and treatment of the majority immigrant population working in the poultry/meatpacking industry in the flyover states and how the conditions are wildly exacerbated by the pandemic. unsurprisingly, Tyson and other meatpacking companies continually got away with putting profit over literal human lives. this was gnarly, graphic, heartbreaking, and so so real given the proximity to 2020/2021. i won’t give the book away but ohhhh boy will this make you rethink eating meat.

thanks to netgalley, the author, and the publisher for the advance copy.

[Gaye · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent book for anyone who is interested in learning about where the chicken they eat comes from, and what goes into those chicken nuggets and other poultry products. Are you sure you want to feed that to your kids? More importantly, this book is about the people who make up the undocumented / coerced labor force, the "illegalized" worker population at the largest poultry factory in the U.S., at Tyson. You will learn about Tyson's policies to try to silence and control the workers, the tedious, robotic and dangerous work conditions. (Between 2012 and 2021, at least 47 ammonia leaks occurred at Tyson plants, injuring nearly 150 workers.) Tyson set up factory infirmaries that mainly ignore workers' health problems, despite many being exposed to toxic chemicals and needing surgery for carpal tunnel syndrome. But this book is also about workers' organizing and resisting the horrible conditions. And that's where hope comes in. All in all, the food you eat is connected to worker's lives and work conditions. So what you eat is a political choice indeed.

[Siobhan Murray · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a good book - important topic and stories. I will never forget finding out what’s actually in a chicken nugget and about the conditions of the workers who process them.

The book ends on this idea that the shift to lab grown meat doesn’t offer real changes, I guess because we’re trading out one factory-made product for another. Although that’s a fair argument, I take some issue with it because you can’t deny that shifting away from slaughtering 80 billion factory farm-raised animals per year offers us a slightly less cruel, and more hopeful, future.

But yeah Tyson is a soulless company that doesn’t care about immigrant workers’ lives. Btw U.S. chickens and poultry aren’t protected under the Humane Slaughter Act and many are fully conscious when slaughtered, many are boiled to death. Don’t buy non-humanely raised chicken (99% of U.S. meat is factory farm-raised though so chances are, if you’re buying chicken, it has not been humanely treated)

[Matthew Chung · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read Fast Food Nation last year and this book caught my eye because it seemed to cover similar material to the second half of Fast Food Nation. It is a very convincing testimony to the harmful nature of large meatpacking companies, towards the general public and especially their own employees. The content of the book also adds to the argument that the United States government is run much more like an oligarchy than a democracy.

[Marika · Rating 4 out of 5]

Exposé of the labor practices at Tyson foods chicken company in Arkansas and the immigrant workers who worked there. Not an easy read due to the depiction of injustice. So much unfairness.



*I read an advance copy and was not compensated

[Bertha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gives the spotlight to stories of Immigrant American workers that deserve to be heard—and fought for.

“the hands of any worker tell you a story, one of missing fingers and scars, deep and textured like a dry riverbed”

[Russell Tassicker · Rating 4 out of 5]

6 other reviewers are scabs

[Angela · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eye opening!

[Alexandra Ricks · Rating 5 out of 5]

So good!!!! Really really well done and I learned so much about modern meatpacking and some fascinating historical tidbits as well. Highly recommend (unless you don’t wanna stop eating chicken…)!

[luna · Rating 4 out of 5]

*4.5 stars
A really good blend of personal accounts surrounding the meatpacking industry in the United States. Some parts felt repetitive, but I don't think it detracts from the emotional and informational aspects of the book.

[Laurel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well-studied; well-researched; remarkably sensitive interviewers & portrayals of the Tyson workers

[Jess · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thanks to Atria and One Signal Publishing for sending me a gifted copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

I don’t read much non-fiction and when I do it really needs to grab my attention. This book did exactly that.

I handle Workers Compensation claims for work, so books like this and The Radium Girls will always suck me right in.

This book was very well written and horrifying! To think that this company, one that mass produces chicken through the United States, was having people working in such deplorable conditions made my stomach turn. It really infuriated me. To think that people are STILL being treated as less than really saddens me.

I don’t want to give anything away because you really need to experience this story yourself to really have that authentic gut punch reaction to the horrors of this chicken processing plant, not only on behalf of the workers but for the consumers as well.

Now more than ever we need OSHA to ensure people are being protected. Unfortunately OSHA is underfunded and understaffed. The scary part is that even if OSHA issues a fine for wrongdoing, paying that fine is so much cheaper than implanting changes to create safer work environments within a company.

[Joyal James · Rating 3 out of 5]

“It’s estimated that undocumented workers make up between 30 to 50 percent of the meatpacking workforce”

“In 2001, Tyson Foods was indicted by a federal grand jury for conspiracy to recruit illegal workers from Mexico and transport them to fifteen Tyson plants in nine states”

“At work, she argued, “They need to provide us documents in Spanish. We are blindly signing things we don’t understand.” When she said that she knew her rights as a worker and should receive documents in her language, her supervisor began harassing her. He refused to let her go to the bathroom. ”

“Supervisors often denied workers bathroom breaks because they needed them to reach their daily production quotas.”

"As they inhaled the gas, her co-workers started to faint around her, their bodies falling with a thud. Rosario said, “We wanted to run but couldn’t, so we inhaled the chemical.” She felt her mind separating from her body and thought she was dying. Then she slipped through the scrum—she wouldn’t remember how—and woke up outside on the pavement, under the oppressive Arkansas sun.
In total, 173 workers were hospitalized that morning. But production at the plant continued. Workers on the second shift arrived, unaware of the accident. Plácido started the three p.m. shift and took his place on the cutting line. An efficient and cheap refrigerant, ammonia is also toxic at certain levels of exposure. It can cause temporary blindness, eye damage, skin irritation, and severe lung injury. The chemical destroys respiratory passages and eyes by sucking water out of them rapidly. At high exposure, it can kill a person in seconds.”

“Tyson partnered with refugee organizations to provide poultry processing jobs to refugees. It was a beneficial arrangement for Tyson because “at the end of the day, workers can’t speak up because they fear losing their work permit.”

[Chris Jaffe · Rating 3 out of 5]

This looks at workers for Tyson Chicken in Arkansas. They are typically immigrants, often illegal ones, with little/no English language skills. This makes them easier to mistreat. Often they're made to sign forms in English that haven't been translated to them. Conditions are horrible, and OSHA so understaffed as to not be a meaningful factor. Doctors and nurses are company staff and their goal is to get the workers back working. Company pastors are hired officially to meet worker spiritual needs, but mostly they're there to rat out workers to the bosses, should a worker actually confide anything to the pators. One day a poisonous gas caused workers to flee and pass out, and the company kept going, not even telling the next shift what happened. COVID saw the company deny any involvement in skyrocketing infection rates among workers, even as they made the workers suffer through long shifts in close quarters and not wanting them to take any time off. Oh, and plenty of prison labor is used, too.

There isn't much theme or plot to the book. It's mostly a litany of how the workers are mistreated. It does build to a lawsuit filed by several dozen workers against Tyson in a class action suit. This suit is the basis for the book's title. The courts threw out the case on multiple procedural grounds before the case even got going. So, yeah, not much sense of momentum here.

I'm glad I gave the book a shot and hope the workers get some victories, but the book mostly lay there flat for me.

[Kathy M. · Rating 3 out of 5]

For nearly 20 years I have avoided buying Tyson products knowingly. Primarily because of their farm practices. I prefer to eat “happy chickens” and pasture raised eggs. Even my dog’s food is ethically sourced.

It is not surprising that a company with Tyson’s track record for raising chickens, also treats their employees very poorly.
As a career Safety Professional and Worker’s Compensation Administrator I am appalled at the Tyson culture concerning the handling of injuries. I was also appalled with the coalition of meat packing plants that lobbied the Mike Pence and the Trump Administration for hold harmless immunity from legal recourse during Covid despite the lack of efforts by the company to lessen the risk of Covid for their “essential” workers. I remember that happening.

At the same time, this book relies too heavily on the reported experiences of only a few workers with what seems like vendettas against the company. There is much embellishment and supposition in the written presentation. It is a shame these workers are unable to find or accept the economic hardship of gaining employment elsewhere ( it is a choice). I have found in my experience as a safety and health representative that the worker’s compensation systems in this country are extremely confusing and hard to understand, this is made worse with a language barrier.

Does Tyson game the worker’s compensation system with it’s company controlled clinics? I believe they probably do.

[Arielle Robinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really like how the author went back and forth between providing history and also centering the real life stories of Tyson workers and their struggles. The book is at times difficult to read because you keep thinking to yourself, “can the horrors of working at Tyson get any worse?” And the horrors never stop. Tyson treats its workers like slaves (I’m not being hyperbolic, if you study chattel slavery and see how many similarities there are between that and the way Tyson has such disregard for the people that make them extremely and excessively wealthy). It’s alarming how much power this corporation has, especially in Arkansas, and the extreme disregard they have for human and animal life and how politicians, in a bipartisan manner, continue to concede to Tyson’s inhumane demands. Of course, Tyson isn’t the only terrible corporation, but this book makes you think of who else is treating workers like this. I can never look at a chicken nugget the same way.

On another note, I like how there is also a focus on what workers have been doing to fight back and to get themselves organized. I can never view Tyson the same way again, though. An important read.

[Kayla Boss]

cw: graphic violence and death, detailed descriptions of animal cruelty and death, minor sexual assault, exploitation and abuse

thank you to @netgalley and @atria for the review copy!

i can’t even begin to describe how distraught and disturbed this book made me feel. i had to stop reading it right before going to sleep. the way the united states is able to exploit and abuse workers is infuriating and should be unacceptable. unfortunately, the few checks and balances that exist are ineffective and insufficient, allowing for a major company like Tyson to exert control over most, if not all, of the aspects of their workers lives including even their healthcare, determining when and how they can receive care knowing Tyson’s interests lie in their employees’ productivity rather than their health or quality of life. seriously boycott Tyson immediately

i don’t know how to rate it because it’s important and i want people to read it AND there are some editing issues [i hate being that person but it’s true] that made it feel disorganized and repetitive sometimes

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was eye opening and graphic. Tyson foods is the largest meat packing company in the US and undocumented workers make up between 30 and 50 percent of their workforce. In Life and Death of the American Worker, Alice Driver describes the plight of immigrants working at Tyson Foods before and during the COVID pandemic. Anyone who works with immigrant communities knows that, as Driver describes here, “the labor of undocumented workers underpins our national food system”. Additionally, the meat packing industry is subsidized so that American consumers are not burdened with the actual cost of meat or the realities of the meat industry’s devastating contributions to climate change. Reading this book was like reading a true crime novel. These people’s lives were stolen from them by corporate greed and they were viewed as expendable. Sadly the perpetrator has not been brought to justice. This is an eye opening read and I learned a lot about abusive labor practices still protected by law in our country.

[Catherine Woodman · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Viral · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the most accessible and gut punching books I've ever read about modern America. Driver does an excellent job helping relay the stories of the working class immigrants who are treated horribly by Tyson Foods, one of the largest meatpacking corporations in the world, in their endless quest of profits. Driver shows us how the workers in these plants are constantly exposed to risks and injuries, treated terribly, given no support, and threatened with deportation when they complain. This gets particularly pernicious when the COVID-19 pandemic upends life and brings the contradiction between safety and endless profit to a whole new level. She also shows us how Tyson Foods and similar Big Ag corporations have used their clout and wealth to shield themselves from scrutiny and regulation as they pollute our air and water, mistreat their workers, and expose us to foodborne illnesses.

A powerful expose, and frankly, mandatory reading in an age where we are more disconnected from where our food comes from than ever before.

[Meredith · Rating 4 out of 5]

A must-read. If you are remotely interested in the food system and the conditions of meat-packing plants in the U.S., read this book. It follows the stories of immigrant workers at Tyson Foods in Arkansas, where the company holds outsized sway on politics and policies. The author traces Tyson's history of getting its way with governors and presidents, including Bill Clinton, and provides an incisive look at the conditions of the company's plants in Arkansas. Warning: You will never want chicken nuggets again. Working conditions are the book's main focus, with Part Two focusing on how conditions only got worse during the pandemic. This is brought to life by the stories of workers who suffered overuse injuries, chemical injuries, and the worst of COVID-19 as their employer lobbied the federal government to exclude the meat-packing industry from pandemic-time regulations. I was furious through most of this book. The violations of workers' rights are an embarrassment to the so-called Land of the Free.

[Hector · Rating 4 out of 5]

Things reaffirmed by Life and Death:
- People have no idea the true cost of the food they consume
- Immigrants are the backbone of this country, yet they are continually vilified and exploited
- Big Agriculture puts profits over people

While the overall story was a bit longer than it needed to be, the stories of the many immigrants working in horrendous conditions at Tyson plants in Arkansas finally have someone to help amplify the voices of their suffering from greed-based injustice. Beyond that, many would be horrified, if not already, by the unsanitary conditions in which their food is produced. I will never allow anyone in my family to consume a chicken nugget.

While heartbreaking, more people need to read these stories and let them inform how we consume. Tyson is clearly the villain here, but all those who purchase foods without considering what brought them to market are complicit in pain.

[Leslie Silva · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wrote a very long review of this while seething after finishing last night and have since deleted. When corporations have so much power society will always put profits over people. Ever clear in this book about really really brave immigrant workers who are fighting back against one of the largest meat packing companies on the planet. While these workers were deemed essential during the pandemic they were left to die so that Americans could have cheap chicken. I’m certain consumers are unaware of this for the most part but the current backlash on all sides of the political spectrum against immigration is extremely depressing.

Somehow the elites in the country have convinced people it’s immigrants driving crime and high prices in the country and not corporations and the lack of jobs that provide living wages. Sigh.

A very thoughtful thoroughly researched book. Highly recommend to anyone who cares about workers, our planet, humanity and the future.