Tyson Foods has sacked seven managers from an Iowa pork processing plant after an independent investigation into claims they took bets on how many employees would get sick with coronavirus, the Arkansas Democrat Gazette reported Friday.
Tyson said the investigation revealed a bizarre behavior that resulted in the terminations at the Waterloo plant. Some 1,000 workers were infected with the virus and six died. Tyson shut down the Waterloo plant after the outbreak but reopened it less than a month later.
"The behavior exhibited by these individuals doesn't represent Tyson's core values, which is why we took immediate and appropriate action to get to the truth." Dean Banks, president and chief executive officer of Tyson, said.
Tyson representative Gary Mickelson said the company wouldn't disclose information or the identities of those who were terminated, citing privacy concerns. Former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is leading the investigation.
A wrongful death lawsuit filed last summer was revised to include new accusations about the behavior of leaders within the Waterloo facility.
The lawsuit, filed by families of four employees who died after getting COVID, said that managers "organized a cash buy-in, winner-take-all betting pool" on how many employees would contract COVID - and denied knowledge about the spread of the disease at the workplace.
The lawsuit named facility manager Tom Hart as one of the betting organizers. The suit also accused Hart and other managers of ignoring the dangers of the disease, branding it a "glorified flu," and lying to translators in order to mislead the plant's non-English speaking personnel.
The complaint also says the company offered $500 as "thank you" bonuses to staff who reported for every scheduled shift for three months - a policy that the plaintiffs argue incentivized sick employees to keep showing up for duty.
The virus spread across the community. Black Hawk County has reported around 12,000 cases and 193 fatalities. Many of the facility's 2,800 workers are refugees and immigrants.
