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Tyson Offering $10,000 Weekly Lottery as Vaccine Incentive

For the next five weeks, Tyson's chicken plant workers can win the prize if they get vaccinated.

In this May 1, 2020 photo, a sign sits in front of the Tyson Foods plant in Waterloo, IA.
In this May 1, 2020 photo, a sign sits in front of the Tyson Foods plant in Waterloo, IA.
AP Photo/Charlie Neiberga

Only a few weeks after announcing it was mandating all its employees get vaccinated by Nov. 1, Tyson Foods is reportedly upping the ante.

Axios cited an internal post Tyson made on its Facebook page Aug. 25 that states the company is giving its poultry plant workers a weekly chance to win $10,000 if they get vaccinated against COVID-19.

Tyson — the largest meat supplier in the US — is reportedly offering workers at its 50 US chicken plants a weekly lottery for a $10,000 prize over the next five weeks if those workers have received at least one dose of the vaccine.

The Arkansas-based company had some 139,000 employees as of the end of October 2020, though the company hasn’t recently stated how many of those are poultry plant workers.

In its Aug. 3 announcement of its vaccine mandate — which requires office workers to be vaccinated by Oct. 1 and all other employees to be vaccinated by Nov. 1 — Tyson said it would provide $200 to its frontline workers as they became vaccinated, subject to union discussions. That’s on top of the company compensating workers for up to four hours of regular pay if they are vaccinated outside of their normal shift or through an external source.

“Getting vaccinated against COVID-19 is the single most effective thing we can do to protect our team members, their families and their communities,” Dr. Claudia Coplein, Tyson’s chief medical officer, said in the company’s Aug. 3 press release. “With rapidly rising COVID-19 case counts of contagious, dangerous variants leading to increasing rates of severe illness and hospitalization among the U.S. unvaccinated population, this is the right time to take the next step to ensure a fully vaccinated workforce.”

As of that Aug. 3 announcement, about 56,000 of Tyson’s US employees had received the vaccine.

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