Coronavirus in rural America (Part XV): the meatpacking plants

I've written a great deal about the U.S meatpacking industry over the years--including the terrible working conditions and underpaid workers, many of them immigrants and/or people of color.  Now, Miriam Jordan and Caitlin Dickerson report from Camilla, Georgia, population 5,360, about what is happening to workers in a Tyson's poultry plant in the coronavirus era.   Here's an excerpt that sums up the situation while neglecting the compelling personal story out of Camilla, which is very close to the much-reported on outbreak in nearby Albany, Georgia:

The coronavirus pandemic has reached the processing plants where workers typically stand elbow-to-elbow to do the low-wage work of cutting, deboning and packing the chicken and beef that Americans savor. Some plants have offered financial incentives to keep them on the job, but the virus’s swift spread is causing illness and forcing plants to close.

* * * 

At the Tyson plant in Camilla, the company offered its 2,100 workers a $500 bonus if they worked in April, May and June without missing a day.

Jordan and Dickerson also mention plants and workers with coronavirus in South Dakota, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee and Colorado, all hubs of meat- and poultry-processing.  Now, some of the plants are starting to close.

Postscript:  Extraordinary New York Times story out of Sioux Falls, South Dakota on April 15, 2020, by Caitlin Dickerson and Miriam Jordan.  As of that date, 640 cases were linked to the Smithfield pork factory there. Here's a subsequent post focusing on South Dakota and another subsequent one focusing on cattle production.