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‘RESPONSIBILITY BONUS’

Smithfield Pork Plant Offered $500 Bonus for Showing Up to Work During Coronavirus Outbreak

The Smithfield pork plant in South Dakota has more than 800 confirmed COVID-19 cases.

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Kerem Yucel/Getty

By Blake Montgomery

A South Dakota pork processing plant offered a bonus of $500 to employees who showed up to work amid a coronavirus outbreak, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued late Wednesday. The CDC found that the Smithfield Foods plant in Sioux Falls offered “responsibility bonuses” to employees who showed up neither sick nor late starting April 1 and continuing until May 1. Smithfield reported its first case of the virus on March 24 and it closed indefinitely on April 14. With more than 800 employees infected, the plant is the single worst coronavirus hotspot in the country. Plant management had provided some social distancing guidelines, but the CDC found them weakly enforced. 

Read it at Centers for Disease Control

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