Olivia Paschal, a journalist in Northwest Arkansas, has been reporting on poultry processing workers. Read the complete article first published by Facing South on August 20, 2020 and translated and republished with permission. This is Part 1 of 4. Riiti ilo Kajin Majel: Kien im Jikin Jerbal raar Kajekdon Jukjukun-pad eo ejoreen jen Ajedeed in COVID-19 ilo factory ko
On June 12, Consul General Eldon Alik sent an email to mayors, state legislative leaders, and representatives for Tyson, George’s, and Cargill. “I hope you’re all well and healthy!” Alik wrote. “I’m not. I’m not well because my fellow Marshallese citizens are not well and are dying at an alarming rate.” His phone had been ringing all week, he continued, with news of Marshallese people who had died of COVID-19. “How many more lives will it take for us to do something? I understand that the poultry plants are essential and that we must continue to open to get the economy going but not at the expense of people’s lives.”
Marshallese people live in the United States under a Compact of Free Association signed after U.S. nuclear testing contaminated their islands with radioactive pollution. In Arkansas, they aren’t eligible for Medicare and most aren’t eligible for Medicaid. Many— especially the elderly— are entirely without access to health insurance. Alik estimates that more than half of working-age Marshallese in Arkansas work in poultry plants. Because they often live in multigenerational households, there’s a high risk of these essential workers transmitting COVID-19 to elderly people, many of whom don’t regularly see a doctor.
“I wrote that email because I just didn’t know what to do, what to say,” Alik told Facing South. “I just felt so frustrated.” At the virus’s peak, he said, more than 600 Marshallese people living in Arkansas were sick. To date, 47 have died. Last week was the first in months that there were no COVID-19 deaths and no funerals to attend. (For now, there have been no covid-related deaths in the Marshallese community since August 2.)
In his email, Alik suggested that poultry plants shut down for two weeks. That would have given sick or exposed employees time to quarantine and allow for the plants to deep-clean. He wasn’t alone: Over the course of the pandemic, many community leaders, workers, and worker advocates pressured industry executives and government officials to shut down Arkansas plants with serious COVID-19 outbreaks. But that never happened. Two weeks after Alik’s email, active COVID-19 cases among poultry workers in Arkansas hit their peak.
Across Arkansas, at least 35 poultry plants have had five or more workers test positive for the virus, according to data from the state Department of Health. Currently, more than 4,600 Arkansas poultry plant workers have contracted the virus, more than 1,400 of whom work in Tyson plants. And poultry plant clusters have contributed to outbreaks in many rural Arkansas communities: In Danville, nearly 200 of the 771 people employed by Wayne Farms’ processing plant have tested positive for the virus. Pilgrim’s Pride and Tyson plants were a large part of an outbreak in Sevier County, where more than one-third of COVID-19 cases have been among poultry workers. Statewide, at least 22 workers have died of the virus.
“We weren’t proactive as a state, we were thinking, ‘It is not going to be like that here. It is not going to get to us,'” said Maria Romero, a speech therapist in Northwest Arkansas who is on the region’s COVID-19 task force. Her mother, who works at a Pilgrim’s Pride plant in Sevier County, contracted COVID-19 and was in the ICU for two weeks. She’s since returned to work.
Hispanic and Marshallese immigrants make up more of the poultry workforce than they do Benton and Washington counties. More than 20% of COVID-19 cases in these counties involved poultry workers — over 1,000 in each county. Of Hispanic and Marshallese people with the virus, 40% Hispanic and 25% Marshallese were factory workers. Hispanic and Marshallese people have also been affected more by the pandemic than others. A CDC field team reported in early July that of all people with the virus in these counties nearly half were Hispanic, and 19% were Marshallese.
When the pandemic began, workers immediately recognized the danger in their workplaces — shoulder to shoulder on the processing line, directly facing other workers, little ventilation, few breaks. Some quit altogether, but others couldn’t afford to. And missing even a day of work could mean the loss of hazard pay, or marks against their attendance record that could result in disciplinary action.
A former employee of George’s Ozark Mountain Poultry in Rogers, a city in Benton County, contacted the city on March 17 asking if the plant would be shut down. He was told by a state health official that the Health Department had no plans to do so. On March 20, workers at two Tyson plants — one in Hope and a second in Pine Bluff — contacted the local Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) office to complain that management had not implemented coronavirus protocol.
“In the factories, they knew it was there, they should have taken safety precautions right away,” Romero said. “They had to see it to believe it.”