Charles Dickens’ Ebenezer Scrooge is an iconic and well-known anti-hero. The story A Christmas Carol has been adapted hundreds of times since its original writing in 1843 by the Muppets, Disney characters, and most recently Jim Carrey. But what you may not know about A Christmas Carol is that Dickens was inspired to write it after learning about child labor exploitation during the Industrial Revolution in England.
Given how difficult this year has been for US workers, despite the record profits enjoyed by some of the country’s biggest companies, I decided another adaptation of this classic story was in order. As in Dickens’ era, our society today is undergoing rapid change and many people are being hurt by corporate greed.
Casting call: Tyson Foods as Ebenezer Scrooge
As the largest company in the US meat and poultry industry, ranking 73 on the Fortune 500 list, Tyson pulled in $43 billion in revenue in fiscal year 2021. As our recent report found, Tyson Foods has a particularly tight grip on chicken markets, especially in its home state of Arkansas.
Even as the pandemic has turned supply chains upside down, Tyson and other big meat and poultry companies have raked in profits that exceed their pre-pandemic levels. Greedy just like Scrooge, all of Tyson Foods’ good fortune comes at a steep cost to others, especially to the company’s workers and their families, the proverbial Bob Cratchits of the Christmas Carol story.
Many of us know the story well. After returning home from a busy day at the office with his apprentice Bob Cratchit, Scrooge turns in for the night and is visited by the ghost of his old business partner Jacob Marley, who laments about his eternity in chains, which he “forged in life” because of his avarice.
In my retelling, the ghost warns Tyson Foods that its mistreatment of workers and farmers, the price fixing, and the damage it has done to many communities during the COVID-19 pandemic, is not worth all the money in the world. He declares that three spirits will visit the company starting this evening.
Ghost of Tyson Foods Christmas Past
The Ghost of Christmas Past enters the Springdale, Arkansas, board room of Tyson Foods and without a sound, whisks away the current company CEO Donnie King and Members of the Board back in history to Tyson’s beginnings.
The Ghost shows them John W. Tyson, who founded Tyson Foods in 1935, paying plant workers a living wage. He provides a crucial market for Arkansas farmers who turned to poultry after the fruit market collapsed in the 1920s. John’s business is flourishing in Arkansas, he has brought new economic opportunity for many people in the state just as the US was coming out of the Great Depression.
The Ghost brings them to the floor of one of their first plants in Springdale, where they find John W. Tyson proclaiming to workers that people are the heart of the company. The Ghost shows Tyson execs the homes and lives of the people that worked for them at that time. The workers went home without a scratch or nick on them, despite the risky work with which they engaged. They had a good quality of life.
Tyson execs and board members got all the feels. They knew the story of Tyson’s start, but hadn’t seen it up close like this, nor had they ever thought about the workers in their plants that helped propel the company to success many decades ago.
But there is more to see.
Ghost of Tyson Foods Christmas Present
“I am the Ghost of Christmas Present!” the Ghost booms. “Tyson Foods, we’ve got a long night ahead.”
The Ghost of Christmas Present walks the Tyson Foods crew downstairs to a caravan and they head north. Confused by where they are going, the Ghost explains they are headed to Waterloo, Iowa. They visit the home of the family of Isidro Fernandez, a Tyson plant worker who died of COVID-19 in 2020. He is one of 1,000 workers who got COVID-19 at this plant, and one of six who died from the virus. Isidro’s family is still mourning his loss, trying to make ends meet without him, but it’s hard. They are fighting Tyson Foods in court because they believe the company didn’t provide adequate COVID-19 mitigation measures. The Ghost and the Tyson executives watch the family as they read a recent news article about how Tyson Foods interpreters lied to plant workers about the dangers of COVID-19 in the plants. Isidro’s family members are all visibly angry with the news.
Then they head to the home of Ei Meh, a refugee from Myanmar, who immigrated to Waterloo to work at the Tyson plant. Her grandfather is dead after contracting the virus from a family member who worked at the Tyson plant.
In quick succession, they are off to the home of yet another deceased worker, Reberiano Garcia, who also died from COVID-19. His six children have had to cope with losing both their parents in the same year.
Then to the town of Green Forest, to Ennelida Lopez’s home. She is alone and busy getting ready to head to the Tyson plant for work. She and her husband contracted COVID-19 in 2020 and he died.
The executives are feeling uncomfortable with all the death and sadness they see.
The final stop is Tyson’s Berry Street plant in Springdale. They stop at the home of Matthew Pelto, who lives across the street from the plant. Tyson executives open the front door and see a complex arrangement of fans and air filters all over the house, and duct tape on the edges of the windows because of all the odors that come from the plant that seep in.
Dawn is approaching, so despite there being many other people and communities the Ghost could show the Tyson executives, the tour must end. The Ghost returns them to Tyson Foods headquarters and explains that the final ghost will appear at the next strike of midnight.
Ghost of Tyson Foods Christmas Future
The Ghost of Christmas Future arrives right on time. The robot-looking ghost immediately teleports the Tyson executives to the year 2040. Holograms of Tyson executives appear in each of the futuristic-looking chairs in their board room at headquarters. They are discussing plans to fully automate their processing plants in Arkansas, a pilot that if successful they will roll out to other plants across the US and globally.
One of the Tyson executives, who has a more public interest streak to her, warns the group that a mass layoff of workers in Arkansas without a just transition plan will devastate families, hurt the state’s economy, and create a social catastrophe. She urges the company to slow down.
Meanwhile, the Ghost of Christmas Future teleports everyone to Polk County and then onto Conway County. By 2040, just a few hundred broiler farms remain in these counties. All the other poultry farms went out of business decades earlier, coinciding with Tyson Foods further consolidating its market power over Arkansas broiler markets. These farms are now raising tens of millions of chickens each, generating waste in such a concentrated way that local waterways can no longer be used as drinking water sources. Nearby farmland, which has been used to dump trillions of pounds of chicken poop has created so much air pollution that one in four residents in these counties have asthma.
Another quick teleport back to Tyson Headquarters, and the Ghost of Christmas Future disappears without a word.
The end of it. Will Tyson wake up to the spirit of Christmas?
Would Tyson Foods, facing its own ghosts, realize the true meaning of Christmas like Ebenezer did at the end of the original Christmas Carol story?
We’re not talking about trivial Christmas bonuses or miserly acts of generosity. We’re talking about meaningful, lasting change for the thousands of workers who Tyson exploits day in and out, just to earn a few extra bucks. This means listening to workers and groups like Venceremos, who have been pushing for better working conditions for years.
We mean transparency and fairness in broiler farmer contracts, a long overdue change. We mean investments and support to help farmers shift to sustainable agricultural practices that preserve soil, keep the air clean and odor-free, and protect drinking water sources and oceans. We mean fair pricing for chicken product buyers and consumers. We mean an end to strong-arming governments to look the other way when you exploit people and communities.
We mean an end to putting profits above all else.
But we don’t have to wait for Tyson to realize the Spirit of Christmas on its own. See our recent report, Tyson Spells Trouble, for policy recommendations that Congress, USDA and the president can undertake now to rein in Tyson’s and other corporate giants power over our food and agricultural system, workers, farmers, and our communities.