The family of a Marshalltown man who died of COVID while working at a Marshalltown area meatpacking plant has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the company for allowing dangerous unprotected working conditions when he contracted the virus.

Jose Andrade-Garcia died in 2020 after contracting COVID while working at the JBS USA meatpacking plant in Marshalltown.

Medical records show that he had been exposed to the virus by a co-worker at the plant.  Andrade-Garcia was one of 2,700 workers at the plant when the virus spread.

Facebook photos from a lunch a the plant in March of 2020 show employees packed into the lunchroom, shoulder-to-shoulder, with no masks, dividers, or other standard means of avoiding the spread of the virus.

The Food Chain Workers Alliance and Rural Community Workers Alliance filed a complaint shortly after alleging that JBS adopted policies that reject CDC guidance to stop the spread of COVID-19 at their processing facilities and that the results of their current operating procedures have a discriminatory impact on the predominately Black, Latino and Asian workforce at the companies’ meat processing plants.

Immediately after Andrade-Garcia’s death in May 2020, JBS terminated health insurance coverage for his widow and minor child.  The family says they had to rely on a GoFundMe account to pay for his funeral.