Life and death of the American worker The immigrants taking on America's largest meatpacking company

The horrifying labor violations of meatpacking behemoth Tyson and the harrowing ordeal of the undocumented immigrant workforce that fought back are revealed in this shocking exposé from journalist Driver (More or Less Dead). The company's ill-treatment of workers at a plant in Springdale, Ark., included startlingly unsafe conditions leading to accidents and subsequent cover-ups. In one incident, a toxic gas leak resulted in the hospitalization of 173 workers (managers insisted workers remain at their stations, even as some began to faint; afterward, the company forced workers to sign liability waivers). One of those workers, Plácido Leopoldo Arrue--whose story Driver follows closely--became seriously disabled by the exposure; he died of Covid in July 2020, likely made more vulnerable by the lung damage. Covid was the initial impetus for Driver's project--in 2020, as meatpacking workers in cramped conditions fell ill, Driver began investigating. Her subjects were reluctant to communicate by phone, and so her story takes her on road trips across the South to conduct in-person interviews, an intrepid effort of gumshoe journalism resulting in an intimate, unprecedented glimpse of the lives of America's undocumented workforce during the pandemic--which includes efforts by some workers to organize with a union and file lawsuits against Tyson. Throughout, Driver's prose is sumptuous and empathetic ("Looking down... they see their faces reflected in a pool of blood," she writes of workers on the assembly line). This is a tour de force. (Sept.)

A freelance journalist uncovers the inhumane conditions plaguing the Tyson Foods meatpacking plants in Arkansas. In 2020, during the height of the pandemic, Driver, author of More or Less Dead, returned to her home state of Arkansas and began interviewing poultry workers at Tyson plants across the state. Although she risked infection, she felt the investigation couldn't wait. "Confronting a powerful company worth billions was daunting.…However, as meatpacking workers began to die of COVID," she writes, "I continued to interview their families, hoping that people were ready to listen." The author reveals disturbing stories of workers whose lungs were destroyed by a chemical accident that Tyson failed to acknowledge; whose repetitive motion led not only to carpal tunnel syndrome, but to unconsciously continuing to imitate these motions in their sleep; and who worked for a pittance as an alternative to incarceration. "In addition to employing undocumented workers," writes Driver, "Tyson also exploits vulnerable prison populations." Throughout these experiences, the workers encountered unsympathetic administrators holding up oppressive systems, including managers who waited outside restroom doors to ensure that workers took inhumanely quick breaks, nurses and doctors who denied workers proper care, and politicians who ignored these practices in order to line their own pockets--most notably, Bill Clinton. "As the governor of Arkansas," writes the author, "Clinton oversaw lax regulations on the meatpacking industry, leading to the contamination of drinking water and hundreds of miles of rivers and streams." This devastatingly frank, brutally detailed peek into the meatpacking industry brilliantly exposes a damaging system that must be reformed. While the ending of the book, which briefly comments on lab-grown meat, feels disconnected from the rest of the story, overall, this is a vital work of journalism. An astonishing exposé of the American meatpacking industry's exploitation of its incarcerated and immigrant workforce. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.