Make Tyson a Safer Workplace, prepared by Friends of Tyson Workers, a community advocacy group and by Lay Paw, a high-school senior who is the daughter of a Tyson Worker

We, the undersigned, are standing up for the well-being of our fellow community residents who want to be productive employees of Tyson Fresh Meats of Wallula, WA and want to protect the health of their families. We commend Tyson for testing all employees and closing their plant and paying employees while doing so. But additional actions are needed to insure a safe workplace. Walla Walla community health director Meghan DeBolt has said that Tyson did an outstanding job handling this outbreak. We disagree and are asking Tyson to do even more to protect workers and their families during this pandemic. Nationwide at least 4,500 Tyson workers have caught COVID-19, with 18 dying. These are alarming numbers. Therefore, we ask Tyson to ensure the following:

• Provide paid sick-leave for all employees so that employees are not incentivized to come to work while they are sick. Tyson’s current point system discourages employees from reporting illnesses, which was one factor in the 250 COVID-19 cases that developed there before they shutdown.

• Provide free COVID-19 tests for every worker who requests one or who has a fever or other COVID-19 symptoms when reporting to work or at work. This is the only proven way to understand and prevent future outbreaks of COVID-19 at Tyson.

• Provide working conditions, protective equipment, and training to protect the health and safety of all employees in accordance with guidance issued by the CDC and by the Washington State Department of Health. Allow local and state health officials access at any time to monitor these conditions and ensure a coronavirus-free workplace by telling the family members of positive-testing workers to stay home.

• Provide higher hourly wages to these essential workers commensurate with the risks that they are assuming to keep our meat supply going. Instead of “Thank You” bonuses and in conjunction with the paid sick leave, this will make it easier for Tyson workers to stay home as they should when they are ill. It is wrong to incentivize workers to come to work even when they are not feeling good by offering “bonuses” or to penalize them for staying home.

• Provide improved communication to the more than 10 different language groups that currently work at Tyson. All aspects of work at Tyson need to be communicated in the workers’ native language during this pandemic so that workers understand the safety benefits being provided, understand the new work policies, understand how to claim benefits, and understand how they can contribute to better safety practices at Tyson. There should be a native language interpreter available for employees to communicate with during all working shifts so that employee concerns can be identified and addressed frequently.

• Provide information about sick workers to county health officials so they can trace contacts and provide instructions for care. Benton-Franklin County health officials have reported that Tyson is not communicating this important information to them.

• Provide childcare. Tyson workers are now having trouble finding childcare since members of the community believe they carry the coronavirus.