Tyson Foods Managers Had COVID-19 Betting Pool–Was “Simply Something Fun”

Back in November 2020, CNN and others reported on a lawsuit against Tyson Foods that alleged, among other things, that managers at an Iowa pork processing plant had a betting pool on how many workers at the plant would contract COVID-19.

The lawsuit (which can be read in full here – 240k PDF) was filed on behalf of Oscar Fernandez, whose father Isidro Fernandez, died after contracting COVID-19. The elder Fernandez was an employee at the Waterloo, Iowa facility, where more than 1,000 Tyson employees became infected with COVID-19.

The basic claim in the lawsuit is that “despite the danger of COVID-19, Tyson failed to provide appropriate personal protective equipment and failed to implement sufficient social distancing or safety measures to protect workers from the outbreak.”

One line in the lawsuit claims,

Around this time [April 10, 2020], Defendant Tom Hart, the Plant Manager of the Waterloo Facility, organized a cash buy-in, winner-take-all betting pool for supervisors and managers to wager how many employees would test positive for COVID-19.

In response to the lawsuit, Tyson Foods hired former Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate the claims. In mid-December 2020, based on the results of that investigation, Tyson fired seven management-level employees who had worked at the plant during that time period.

The bizarre thing is at least one of those managers is still clueless and wants to clear his name by characterizing the betting pool as just an effort to boost morale among the managers.

Don Merschbrock, a former manager at the plant, is quoted by ABC News as saying,

Merschbrock, who had been with Tyson for a decade, said managers were given the “impossible task” of maintaining production while implementing virus safety precautions. They had been working 12-hour days, six or seven days per week, he said.

The office pool involved roughly $50 cash, which went to the winner who picked the correct percentage of workers testing positive for the virus, Merschbrock said. He added that those involved didn’t believe the pool violated company policy and thought the plant’s positivity rate would be lower than the community rate due to their mitigation efforts.

“It was a group of exhausted supervisors that had worked so hard and so smart to solve many unsolvable problems,” Merschbrock said. “It was simply something fun, kind of a morale boost for having put forth an incredible effort. There was never any malicious intent. It was never meant to disparage anyone.”

It was simply something fun.

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