130: Invisible Labour Behind Chicken Nuggets: The Immigrants Taking on America's Largest Meatpacking Industry with Alice Driver

Welcome to Anthoradesh, the show about food, culture and identity. I'm your host, Sarah Dugman. We've heard stories about how chicken nuggets are riddled with questionable ingredients, but what gets missed when looking at industrial meat production is those who process and nations worth of meat and poultry, which are the immigrants working at places like Tyson Meatpacking companies throughout Arkansas. My guest today is Alice Driver, who has written a haunting exposé on the toxic labor practices experienced at Tyson, which is the largest meatpacking company in America. Alice is a Jay Anthony Lucas and James Beard Award-winning writer from the Ozark Mountains in Arkansas. She is here today to discuss some of the central themes in her new book, The Life and Death of the American Worker, the immigrants taking on America's largest meatpacking industry, which is out officially as of today through Simon & Schuster. She is also the author of More or Less Dead. In our conversation, Alice details the story of the immigrant workers who had the courage to fight back after decades of deadly chemical accidents, hyper surveillance and unsafe working conditions throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. She unveils how the landscape and politics of Arkansas are marked by the poultry industry and the exploitation models that went into creating such difficult and hazardous working conditions for those who are often subjected to invisible labor. She recounts how workers fought back in a lawsuit against Tyson Foods despite the potential consequences and what is needed to truly change meatpacking industry standards. Here is my conversation with Alice. Welcome to the show, Alice, how are you doing today? Oh, thanks for having me. I am just having my coffee. Likewise, yeah. So before we jump into the big discussion today, do you mind sharing a snapshot of who you are, where you're coming in from and the type of work that you do? My name is Alice Driver. I'm an investigative journalist and I was born in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas. My parents were part of the back to the land movement and this is part of my story and part of who I am. They moved to Arkansas, botland and they wanted to grow their own food and built the house that they still live in. And I also grew up without a TV. So I read a lot of books and I always wanted to be a writer. And I became an investigative journalist and I work at the intersection of immigration and food systems. Awesome. Thank you for sharing. And I think that's something that really struck me throughout the book is just how your personal connection to the Ozark Mountains and Arkansas in general really kind of shone through in terms of how you wrote about it, not just in terms of the workers but the landscape and the political situation as well. So thinking about the state of Arkansas, I'm from Canada. So my knowledge of different states is a little lacking in certain areas but can you speak to the sort of conditions politically and socially in Arkansas that allow an industry like Tyson to thrive in the way that it has so far? Well, Arkansas like much of the South has really been a center of sort of testing out anti-labor legislation like Arkansas was the first state along with Florida to pass right to work legislation. And I include this in my book and at the time that it was passed, it was so much of what has been legislated in Arkansas if you analyze it has roots in our racist history. I mean, one thing that I still can't believe is that Arkansas is the home of the headquarters of the KKK to this day. And that even enters into my book because many workers are required to go to certain doctors and some of them are in Harrison, Arkansas, which is the home of the KKK. And so you have immigrant workers who are afraid to go to Harrison to the doctor. Anyway, there's just a lot of things about this state and its history. You know, and we just last year we were the first state to start rolling back child labor operations in Arkansas. A 14 year old can work with no parental consent and the state is not required to verify their documents. So what does that mean? What is the target audience of that? The target audience is an immigrant child, an unaccompanied minor. Yeah. And do you mind explaining to like with the egg egg that is in place in Arkansas? It just feels like it's set up for, as you said, like it's set up for a child to work for an undocumented minor to work. What does the egg egg kind of set up so that industry can get away with this the way that it is? Well, egg laws are pretty standard across the South. And in many states that have a strong meat packing industry, for example. So in Arkansas, what that means is that they're the law prohibits, for example, eyes of journals, I never step foot on Tyson property. Even let's say everyone said go undercover. If I wanted to get a job at Tyson, it's also against the law to film, to take photos or to enter the premises with the purposes of writing about the company. And then, so you have that officially. And then on the other side of that, you've got Tyson and workers saying that when they take a job, they sign a document saying that they will not speak to the media. So it makes it really difficult to have a basic conversation about what does this daily labor look like inside of a meat packing plant? And in terms of you first starting to look at this story and report on it, how did you get in touch with some of the workers? Like what were some of the kind of challenges or like ethical considerations that you had to navigate in in beginning this work? Well, I started this work in early 2020. Actually, right, when the pandemic hit, my first thought was because I've been thinking about doing a meat packing story for many years, was that workers were going to die because in meat packing, there will never be social distancing because social distancing means lower production. And if the choice is, are we going to save workers, are we going to save workers by lowering production or are workers going to die because we need to maintain production? They're going to maintain production. And that's what happened. So I was I was based in Mexico City for many years. And at the beginning of the pandemic, I was living there when I started reporting the story. So I was reporting it by phone and I was reaching out to organizations in Arkansas that work with immigrants. And I said, look, I know that they cannot use their real names. So anybody who wants to speak to me anonymously, let them know that they can talk to me. If they want to, if they don't want to understand because I know the stakes of this, I know they will be fired. You know, many of them are undocumented. Many of them are supporting extended family here in the United States and in their home countries. So any kind of retaliation on the part of the company if they speak to me, I know the reality of that. And so I gave them that space. And it was very, very slow work. And that's why I would say that's why this book took four years because it's very complicated. You have to hold space for people's worries because their worries are real. And I'm not in control of what a very large global company does. I can do my best from text, my sources. And as it stands, every single person in the book has a student in them except for people who are dead and people who no longer work at Tyson. Yeah, and that was something that I found really powerful throughout the book was the relationship that you developed with the workers that you interviewed, the stories that you wove through. It was a much more personal story than you typically read when you read about migrant labor work or meat packing industries. So in terms of building those sorts of relationships, can you kind of speak to how that came about for you as well? Well, everything. So once I, you know, in the early pandemic, you know, I wasn't doing interviews in person because of COVID. But once I was able to, I was driving across Arkansas because I was really working. I live in Little Rock and the communities I was working with were in Springdale, Rogers, and Green Forest primarily, which is, you know, three, three and a half hour drive from here. So I was driving across the state. I worked with a photographer who's from Arkansas and this was really important to me. I knew I wanted to document their daily lives and photograph their daily lives because I have never seen a project about meat packing workers like photographs of them. And I'm not talking about in the plant or PR photos or I wanted something that really showed like what, you know, they're gardening, they're cooking. their children, you know, their faith, which is something that was very important in the book. And so all of this work was done in person. I mean so many of these workers, they're a literate. I'm not, they're not going to be texting me. They're not, you know, or, you know, they haven't paid their phone bill for whatever reason. A lot of my work was I would drive. I would, you know, if they weren't home, I would wait outside, you know, or I would like chat with the neighbors, so a lot of it, I mean, it was deeply, deeply rooted in an in-person relationship. Which especially during COVID, I'd imagine is a lot to navigate on both ends too. Yeah, yeah. Something that I thought was really powerful to in the book. And in the covers that you have, you know, you have these photographs, you have really vivid descriptions of hands as well, and hands in the photos, which I thought was like a really beautiful nod to, you know, keeping, keeping people anonymous, but also the amount of work that goes into using your hands at Tyson as well. Yeah, and that's something that I can really think. I had a mentor from one of my writing retreats. My mentor was Mark Bowden, the author of Blockcock Down, and he read one of my chapters, and he said, "You need to know," he said, "You think you know what their hands are doing. Ask them to show you what they're doing at work." And that was a game changer, and that's actually how I got into what, to me, is the most interesting part of the book. That's how I got into workers working in their sleep. Yeah, that was quite surprising to read about, and it really hit home like how exhausting and how, you know, continuous the treatment of Tyson was not even just at the plant, but as they left and how it affected their families. Do you mind describing what sort of environment, like for those that aren't familiar with Tyson, what this sort of environment does to an employee, like emotionally and physically, the toll that the environment takes on them after working there for so many years? Yeah, that's a great question. There are several factors that workers are dealing with. One is chemicals. I mean, meat-packing plants are, there's very high chemical use, and if they're mixed incorrectly, it can be explosive and deadly. So a lot of the workers, and this is something, you know, I was coming in in COVID, and I was interviewing them about COVID conditions, but a lot of them already had lung damage, chemical accidents. And then what did I, the second thing, I mean, every time I ran into something, I ran into something else, the second part of that is workers said, "Well, I had this, my lungs were damaged and this can't be black, but Tyson Foods has an internal medical system." So then they said, "Well, I know my lungs were damaged, but the clinic, the onsite clinic, the nurses say that I'm fine." And so workers had, some of them, it took some of them years because if they go outside of the onsite clinic, if they go outside of the medical system, they have to pay for it themselves, and many of them just can't do that. So, you know, for it's a whole process for them, even realizing, you know, what are my actual injuries? And then, and then aside from the chemicals, there's the daily repetitive labor. And that was the really amazing thing about asking them to show me what they did with their hands, you know, if they're cutting, let's say they're cutting wings off the chicken, and, you know, and they could, they would like, I do this in three seconds, 2.5 usually, and then you have to sharpen your knife, because if your knife's not sharp, you get even more hurt. And then, you know, there's so many layers to it that are kind of mundane. The other thing is that the protective equipment, you know, they need it in their size, because if your glove is too big, it can slip and you can, you know, you can cut your arm or cut your finger. And they said that there's not, you know, there's not an adequate amount of protective equipment. So you arrive and you try and get your size. And if you arrive first, you might get the glove that you need. And if you don't arrive early enough, you won't get it. And so, and then, you know, on top of that, for example, one day, I was interviewing a worker, and she said, oh, yeah, today we had, we had to sign a document of saying that if we got decapitated in this machine that we understood, we understood beforehand the risks. And I was, I was like, what? And, and so then I looked online, I looked at the news. So at a different plant in a different state, a worker had been decapitated because he was cleaning machine and the, the machine didn't have a safety and the machine turned on while he was in it. And so I, I realized, like what Tyson does, you know, proactively is then every worker, every plant had to say, we know about this decapitation, we know that it could happen. And therefore, if it does happen, we accept responsibility for it. So that's how they explained it. Anyway, there was just all these internal things that were really shocking to me. Yeah. And I think, you know, that coupled with even, even like the day-to-day tasks that you take for granted, like being able to take a bathroom break at your job, like the amount of duress that it sounded like people are going through to, to do that and feel like they were being monitored and couldn't, you know, have that five, ten minute break there as well. Yeah, the bathroom thing. And, you know, a lot of these things, you know, affect women and men in different ways. But, you know, women were dealing with, you know, not being able to go to the bathroom, being chased, being yelled at, and, you know, really being monitored because any person who goes to the bathroom, that is a time off the line. And that means lower production. And so it's interesting to me, like, you know, the focus is like, we must keep every person on the line, whether they have to wear a diaper, whether they, you know, whether they're sick, whatever's happening. And so part of what the onsite nursing system and in the process of, in these four years, I got one nurse to speak to me. Without her name, anonymously, but that's, you know, I reached out to several and I knew it was going to be, I've never, I've never found another interview with a nurse from, from, from Tyson's onsite medical system. And she did say, you know, look, there is pressure for us, you know, there are managers and supervisors that come into the room and opine on conditions, even though none of them are trained medical personnel. And there's pressure to just get people back to work. She said, we do our best, you know, we do what we can. But it very much feels like an environment where there's so much pressure across everybody to, to continue the line working with the efficiency that it is. And I think a piece that I was, you know, questioning through all of that is what sort of drives this demand for, you know, this amount of meat packing to, to happen as well. Well, it's interesting because Kamala Harris just released her economic plan. And in it, she touches on meat packing. You know, she says the constant, the concentrated power of the meat packing industry because part of the problem, you know, I use Tyson as an example because it's the largest meat packing company in the US. But there's, you know, a handful of companies and they have been shown to, for example, what she mentions in her economic plan is that they've polluted on prices. So that actually the price of meat is higher for consumers. And then the flip side of that, which she does not mention in her plan. But I hope she will is that they, you know, suppress, you know, the cost of labor. And also, you know, they save money on labor conditions, you know, on keeping workers safe. Yeah. And that was something that I found really interesting what you're writing about was that, you know, it almost felt like it was a bipartisan agreement that these conditions persisted. And that meat packing industries were so dependent on undocumented workers that, you know, when you have all these discussions around anti-immigration that are coming up through the election, it just, it's striking because it feels like the demand for these products is so deeply intertwined with needing undocumented workers in these places as well. Yeah, the demand, you know, the demand and, you know, the company would not run without, I mean, the labor force is undocumented people, children, imprisoned people. You know, they're really relying on vulnerable populations. And so at a time, you know, in the United States, when for years, we've heard rhetoric about the border crisis and how, you know, migrants are pouring across the border, they are here and they are working for companies like Tyson and they are upholding our food system. And instead of discussing how can we honor these workers who are doing the most, the most dangerous job in the United States, how can we offer them, you know, a way to work legally because we clearly are relying on their labor. And especially, you know, with a presidential candidate who is a felon, who keeps saying, you know, these terrible things about migrants being criminals when actually the opus, he's the criminal and they're here working because they're really hard working and it's, you know, it's high time that we listen to them and honored the work that they're doing. Yeah, I could agree more and I think the work that you did to share their stories and to put them in, in like their full lives just not just existing in Tyson was, was really, really powerful and I'm curious, you know, you talk a lot about the lawsuit that the workers put together. Do you mind sharing a little bit about, you know, what it took for the workers to kind of come together amidst these deplorable conditions and the fear? What was it that kind of brought them into coming together for this lawsuit? Yeah, I mean, it was interesting for me because, you know, when I started interviewing workers, I was, you know, I was working on one article. I, you know, every, a lot of people are telling me, you know, there's no point in doing this like no one's interested in this, especially with an Arkansas. Oh, there's, you know, no interest in this topic. And so, you know, when workers started dying of COVID, they were, and that was, you know, that was a tipping point because, you know, workers are, are afraid of retaliation on the part of Tyson. But when their family members started dying and I need to say like often an entire family works at Tyson mother, father, son, sister, you know, so one of the difficulties is even if an individual wants to speak to a journalist, maybe their other family members do not want them to do that because they worry about the repercussions. So it's a very complicated situation. But when workers started dying, that is when they wanted justice and they were like, okay, how can we, how can we coordinate? How can we, what can we do? And this, you know, this happened in conjunction with Vinceremos, which is that Arkansas based in Geo that supports the poultry workers in, look in seeking, you know, improved labor conditions. So they were trying to find a lawyer, which is what, you know, everything in this state is going to be impossible. Even I needed to interview a lawyer for an article I was working on and the editor wanted an Arkansas lawyer. So I contacted, for example, University of Arkansas Law School. I reached out to all kinds, not a lawyer in the state of Arkansas agreed to speak to me. And all I wanted them to speak about was, it was a law called limited liability, which related to, to COVID labor conditions. So I had to find a lawyer. She was from Arkansas, but she lived in California. And I'm saying this because imagine if it's that hard for me, I don't work with Tyson. Workers had to find a lawyer outside of Arkansas. And then the lawyer was here interviewing people and, you know, coordinating, getting medical documents and all of these things. And it was, it was beautiful to watch and I wanted to capture, you know, their organization and because it was a worker led, you know, a worker led movement in terms of the workers organizing for themselves. But I also was aware because it was filed in Arkansas, the lawsuit, that it was very unlikely that the lawsuit would, you know, would survive and it didn't. So yeah. Yeah. And it's something that I mean, you painted a really clear kind of holistic picture of why it didn't go through. Legally, all of the barriers in place, but I think something that really stuck out amidst that was, you know, the stories of people like Victor or Gloria or Rosario were just so moving like it's impossible not to feel some sort of call to action after you read about their lives and what they risk to share those stories. And I wonder like in your perspective, having compiled all these stories and put this research together, what do you think is, you know, what does it take to change me packing if the law is not going to budge for it? Well, I mean, I wanted to, I mean, one of the things that I want everyone to take away from my book is the power of worker led movements. And so in Arkansas, we have in Saramos, which was founded by 16 women, the majority of them working at at poultry processing plants like Tyson. And one of the in one of the chapters of my book, I follow Arkansas poultry workers to Florida where they meet with a coalition of emoculate workers, which is another worker led organization of agricultural workers that has been really successful in creating change. And the beautiful thing about the coalition is that they invite and teach other groups of workers. For example, when I was there was construction workers, milking workers from Vermont. And these, you know, these are all immigrants largely from Mexico and Central America. And they're teaching them, you know, what is the key to informing consumers to, you know, to really moving the needle in terms of changing laws and pressuring companies to make change. And so I wanted to capture the power of that. And the thing is that it's slow. That's funny thing. Change is slow. But so even though, you know, the Arkansas workers lost their lawsuit, I think, you know, I think their story is powerful. And they're continuing to do that work. I just visited many of them this weekend. So I wanted to show kind of like they're continuing to do the work. And hopefully we will support these organizations. And also think about we need to rethink meat packing as a country. And it's the changes needed are not, they're not even that difficult. One would be, you know, fully staffing the organization that oversees safety, which is Ocha. Yeah. Yeah. And that was something, you know, kind of hinted at the end of your book where it feels like it's repeating with beyond meat. That was really surprising to hear that Tyson had acquired them as well. And it just felt like it just put everything into that bigger perspective of really thinking about where you get your food from the amount of invisible labor that goes into that that is, you know, felt through through these workers families for generations as well. So, yeah, I really appreciate the amount of work that you did in putting this story together so that people do have a sense of what that takes. And that hopefully that there's some momentum from that as well. Yeah, it was, I mean, it's definitely the hardest work that I've ever done. But I do believe that their stories will resonate with people in the US and beyond. Yeah, most certainly. I mean, yeah, as a Canadian, I feel like that completely shifted how I think about it. Like we're having discussions around migrant labor work up here as well with like out in BC, the climate change conditions in Ontario as well. There's a lot of shifts happening to like the legalities of undocumented work here for farmers and how we're so deeply dependent on it. So it just, it really pushes to explore that further and to connect the dots a little bit more in terms of the food, the reading as well. Mm-hmm. That, you know, that these individuals who are upholding our food system in the US, that's 100% true. And that that's what we should be discussing, you know, and honoring and thinking about like, if we're relying on the immigrant labor that is coming across the border, including undocumented people, including children, we need to be discussing that and we need to be discussing it with respect to the difficulties that they've faced and the work that they're doing for us. Yep, 100%. Well, Alice, thank you so much for taking the time. You might be sharing before we wrap up where people can find your book if they want to learn more or any additional resources that you'd recommend people check out as well. Oh, thank you. My book will be out on September 3rd and it is available at all major booksellers, Amazon, Barnes & Noble bookshop if you want to support indie bookstores. And you can pre-order it, which would be lovely. And I will also be visiting book festivals in Texas, Tennessee and Florida. Awesome. Well, I wish you all the best in your book festival tours and thank you again. It's been such an eye-opening book to read and I really appreciate everything that you've done with that. Oh, thank you, Sarah. Thanks for taking the time to talk about the book. That was Alice Driver. I've linked her book Life and Death of the American Worker, as well as her website in the show notes below if you want to follow along in there more. You could also find all of this at our website at anthridish.com under episodes. For more anthridish, you can find us at anthridish.com or on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook at anthridishpodcast. Feel free to drop us a line and let us know what you think about the episode. I always welcome Congresswoman. and reflections on what you've been learning from the show. Anthrodiche is produced in partnership with the American Anthropological Association. Thank you so much for tuning in, and we'll catch you next week. (upbeat music)