Beadle County produced South Dakota’s first coronavirus hotspot and two early high-profile deaths. Coronavirus cases in and around Huron spiked in May as turkey processor Dakota Provisions succumbed to the virus that is plaguing cold, crowded meatpacking plants across the country. Only our eleventh most populous county, Beadle County currently has the second highest count of coronavirus cases since the beginning of the pandemic.
It thus seems reasonable that a fair number of workers at Huron’s turkey plant would listen to local facts instead of Mike Pence’s viral denialism and choose to stay home for a few more days to avoid bringing home coronavirus. Around a hundred Dakota Provisions employees—about a tenth of the turkey plant’s workforce, many of them Karen immigrants who have saved Huron from demographic and economic decline—took exactly that health precaution on Saturday.
HR did not find those absences reasonable. Workers received this message Sunday from Dakota Provisions Director Mark “Smoky” Heuston:
Boning this Saturday was a disaster. To the 60 Boning and 53 Kill employees that came to work Saturday, we can’t tell you how much we appreciate your loyalty….
Coronavirus has changed many of our lives, but we will recover. 100 employees did not attend work today. Getting together and purposely hurting Dakota Provisions today will hurt the company financially forever. I do everything I can to support the Karen community every way I can. There is not one family or person that I have not helped in some way!
When you do something like this, I struggle convincing the owners they should help you. Dakota Provisions has paid thousands of dollars building homes for you, educating you, paying for your celebrations, soccer tournaments, and recently paying you when you are too sick to attend work. You have greatly disappointed me! [Mark Heuston, e-mail to Dakota Provisions employees; quoted in Shannon Marvel, “Management Email to South Dakota Meat Processing Employees Offends Karen Community,” Worthington Globe, 2020.06.16].
Karen workers themselves acknowledge that Heuston has done a lot for them, although I’m willing to speculate that his efforts to compensate the Karen for their profit-producing and community-saving labor probably don’t include risking his life.
On Tuesday, Dakota Provisions CEO Ken Rutledge offered a kinda-pology:
To all employees who have worked the scheduled timing at the DP plant locations, a sincere and heartfelt Thank You.
To any employee that was upset by the recent personal posting from Smoky Heuston, I would ask that you consider everything that Smoky has done for all of our employees and understand that his comments came from a genuine concern for the future of our company and for the future of our employees.
The COVID-19 pandemic has created a high level of frustration for everyone and we need to remember we are all in this together.
Smoky has been told never to allow this situation to happen again.
To those employees who were upset, I humbly and sincerely, apologize [Ken Rutledge, memo to workers, quoted in Benjamin Chase, “Dakota Provisions CEO Addresses Weekend Memo, Dept of Health in Contact,” Huron Plainsman, 2020.06.17].
Lead with Capitalized Thanks to those who are risking their lives to keep generating capital, make excuses for the offensive comments, refer vaguely to “this situation” (which could mean anything, from offending employees to creating bad press), then finally get around to apologizing. If I wanted to communicate the message that, “HR screwed up, we apologize,” I’d skip the first three items and lead and end with the apology.
And as a manager in times of pandemic when my Governor is taking no serious policy action to control the spread of contagion, not even wearing a mask in public to lead by example, and just trusting her people to use their Freedom™ to do what’s right, I’d do all I could to praise and support workers who are choosing to use their Freedom™ to do what’s right and stay home instead of putting themselves, their families, and their coworkers at risk of a disease that’s particularly bad in our neighborhood.
Dear Mark Heuston @ Dakota provisions, “Wah, effing, wah!!!”
Unfortunately for people of Karen descent, any wasicu wastey calling the police on blacks and other minorities for doing everyday stuff like walking or grilling are being labeled as Karens.
https://theconversation.com/how-karen-went-from-a-popular-baby-name-to-a-stand-in-for-white-entitlement-139644
Great link mfi. The Karen people have been through much hardship from their native lands and then to find a welcome mat here, was amazing for them. They did not take their new found home for granted either. They have worked hard and have had rewards for doing so. To me, the Karen people are exactly what a union worker is all about. That scares the hell out of Mark Heuston. To think that workers would walk off the job because of unsafe conditions, is not what the bosses want to see.
The Karen people also have something else going for them, they will not be deported for trying to save their own lives, the lives of their families and that of their community by not working in an unsafe place. This is not the case in Sioux Falls, Aberdeen or any of the other hell holes that immigrant workers are forced to get sick and die in or be deported.
We need to look to Germany to see how they will handle the large outbreak of Covid that is happening in the plants there. My guess is that processing plants there will have to change the layouts and workstations to meet the future. It’s clear that America no longer leads so we hopefully will follow what they come up with. It wouldn’t surprise me to see that any kind of market that was hyped for a Brexit deal with the United States, will now be quietly shelved until Germany figures out how the rest of the world should handle meat processing and the workers who process in those factories. The Europeans value their supply lines of food and also have a keener sense of fair play (with great vacation time, family leave, healthcare, pensions, etc.).
There are A LOT of examples lately of overdramatizing and overprioritizing short-term economic hardship in the face of significant health and safety dangers (sadly, also a lot of truly dramatic and large-scale economic losses), but this may be the most overdramatized snippet I’ve heard over the whole pandemic: “Getting together and purposely hurting Dakota Provisions today will hurt the company financially forever.” I sincerely doubt that one “disaster” boning day truly has that much impact, and, if one day truly can hurt the company “forever,” there are probably a lot more management-level problems there.
I had a “disaster” morning today where one hyphen cost me a full hour of work, setting me behind on all of my planned office “production” quotas. That one-day “disaster” won’t set me back forever; I’ll just catch up.
Of course, I’m only processing papers and data, not turkeys… but my “products” are still quite time-sensitive.
Workers didn’t stay home to hurt the company. I’m sure the Karen workers enjoy their paychecks as much as their bosses enjoy their profits. The workers stayed home so they wouldn’t hurt anybody. As TWU says, they made an intelligent and moral decision to prioritize health and life over material wealth.
Follow up question to Provisions Director Mark “Smoky” Heuston: . . . and how much has Dakota Provisions profited from the work of these men and women you have . . . helped?
Why is “being good to workers” never framed in the context of the stockholder stock price increases and CEO bonuses those workers made possible?
Smoky was a dick when he was HR with Dakota Pork and Swift in Huron. He is now an older and not wiser one now
I noticed that the terms “lazy” and “ungrateful bastards” were missing from Heuston’s comments.
So you see just how truly valuable these valuable workers are to the greedy overseers.
Appears to me since drumpf was elevated to czarina by Putin and demands absolute loyalty to himself, not America, that many businesses are acting like drumpf. In drumpf’s world, loyalty is a one way street.
They need to stay home more, looks like…..
drumpf body count…
120,688
and climbing.
I admire the courage and determination of the Karen people and others who are staying home in the face of pretty intense pressure to go to work.
I will give DP points for creating extra ways for the employees to feel at home and comfortable in Huron. However, “Smoky’s” after-all-I’ve-done-for-you was just childish. Is he the white savior who should now be loved? 🙄