A Tyson Foods worker was killed May 15 at the company’s Wallula, Washington beef processing plant. The worker, 27-year old Alberto Serrato, died after suffering severe, crushing injuries at the facility according to the Walla Walla County Coroner’s Office.
Tyson Foods said Serrato died in an “incident” at the plant and that it had notified the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). No federal investigation has yet been announced but the Washington State Department of Labor said the day of the killing that it has begun an investigation. OSHA and state investigations often take months or years and typically result in only minor financial penalties for the capitalists responsible for sacrificing workers for their profits.
About 1,500 workers labor at Tyson’s Wallula plant, which combines stockyards, slaughterhouses, and meat processing. Tyson is one of the “Big Four” meatpacking monopolies that dominate the US beef industry, along with JBS, Cargill, and National Beef Packing Company.
The Wallula facility was temporarily shut down during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 after a major outbreak of the virus among workers. Tyson Foods later faced lawsuits and investigations over its handling of Covid-19 outbreaks across its US plants. Nationwide, workers reported being kept on cramped production lines with limited protective equipment as infections spread through plants at the height of the pandemic.
Meat processing is among the most dangerous industries in the US. The monopolies rely heavily on foreign-born workers, and workers in the sector report exposure to hazardous conditions, limited workplace protections, and deportation threats used to discipline labor and suppress wages across the workforce. According to OSHA data collected between 2015 and 2022, Tyson had the 5th highest number of severe workplace injuries among reporting companies despite employing far fewer workers than others topping the list.
As beef supplies tighten and tariffs disrupt meat imports, meatpacking monopolies have responded with layoffs, plant closures, speedups, and worsening conditions inside plants. Workers at the JBS beef plant in Greeley, Colorado, who recently ended a three-week strike, described line speeds so intense that workers were expected to complete five days of work in four.
Image: Workers at a meat processing facility in North Carolina. Credit: Mark Stebnicki.
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