LIFE AND DEATH OF THE AMERICAN WORKER

A freelance journalist uncovers the inhumane conditions plaguing the Tyson Foods meatpacking plants in Arkansas.

In 2020, during the height of the pandemic, Driver, author of More or Less Dead, returned to her home state of Arkansas and began interviewing poultry workers at Tyson plants across the state. Although she risked infection, she felt the investigation couldn’t wait. “Confronting a powerful company worth billions was daunting.…However, as meatpacking workers began to die of COVID,” she writes, “I continued to interview their families, hoping that people were ready to listen.” The author reveals disturbing stories of workers whose lungs were destroyed by a chemical accident that Tyson failed to acknowledge; whose repetitive motion led not only to carpal tunnel syndrome, but to unconsciously continuing to imitate these motions in their sleep; and who worked for a pittance as an alternative to incarceration. “In addition to employing undocumented workers,” writes Driver, “Tyson also exploits vulnerable prison populations.” Throughout these experiences, the workers encountered unsympathetic administrators holding up oppressive systems, including managers who waited outside restroom doors to ensure that workers took inhumanely quick breaks, nurses and doctors who denied workers proper care, and politicians who ignored these practices in order to line their own pockets—most notably, Bill Clinton. “As the governor of Arkansas,” writes the author, “Clinton oversaw lax regulations on the meatpacking industry, leading to the contamination of drinking water and hundreds of miles of rivers and streams.” This devastatingly frank, brutally detailed peek into the meatpacking industry brilliantly exposes a damaging system that must be reformed. While the ending of the book, which briefly comments on lab-grown meat, feels disconnected from the rest of the story, overall, this is a vital work of journalism.

An astonishing exposé of the American meatpacking industry’s exploitation of its incarcerated and immigrant workforce.