It was story time at the Tyson Learning Center in Humboldt, Tennessee, and teacher Tequeria Pewitte was rounding everyone up. 

“I need all my friends to have a seat on their bottoms, please,” Pewitte said. “Let me see you do crisscross applesauce.”

All of the kids are related to workers at the poultry processing plant next to the center. Tyson hired KinderCare to operate the facility, which opens at 4:30 in the morning, right before the day shift starts at the plant. Garrett Dolan with Tyson Foods said the company wants to make sure its workers have a place to bring their kids.

“We need guaranteed open slots at the hours that we operate, and the only way to control that was for us to do it ourselves,” Dolan said.

Dolan, who works in human resources, was the main driver behind Tyson’s new child care program. The company invested nearly $5 million to open the site this summer. In rural areas where many of the company’s plants are located, there simply isn’t enough affordable child care, and that makes it hard for Tyson to attract workers. 

“You’re thinking, ‘Gee, I can make $36,000 a year, but I’m going to have to pay $11,000 of that for child care. Is it worth it?’” said Dolan. “I think a very common answer is ‘No, it’s not.’”

More and more, the lack of affordable child care in the U.S. is becoming an issue for employers. The federal government is trying to get ahead of it in the semiconductor industry: Any company applying for more than $150 million in CHIPS Act funding must include a child care plan for its workers, down to those constructing the plants. 

“The goal of this, of course, is to make sure that we can get every single qualified individual off the sidelines who is able to work and wants to work,” said Adrienne Elrod, director of external and government affairs for the CHIPS Program Office.

Tyson is responding to a workforce need, as well. The center in Humboldt is a pilot program for the company. Tyson chose a location in Tennessee because it offers a robust child care subsidy. Tyson subsidizes the care too, and parents pay, on average, $1.66 an hour. That’s less than half what it would cost in centers elsewhere in Tennessee. And having access to care can be life-changing for shift workers, some of whom don’t have much outside support. 

“A lot of people say they have a village. I don’t have a village,” said Tiffany Butler, who runs a deboning machine at the Humboldt plant.

Butler has five kids, ages 1 to 13. She stopped working when her youngest was born, but when Tyson opened the child care center this summer, it meant she was able to rejoin the workforce.

Butler said she was really excited about “getting to be a working mother and getting to be able to be independent. That’s big.”

She said her kids are happy and learning, and that she’d stay with Tyson even if she was offered another job with a bigger salary. 

This is what companies call a “sticky benefit” because it keeps workers sticking around. 

But Elliot Haspel, author of the book “Crawling Behind: America’s Childcare Crisis and How to Fix It,” believes there’s dangers in linking child care as a benefit to employment. One, he said, is that it will inevitably leave out lots of people. 

“Think about the millions of gig workers in this country. They don’t have an employer of record. They cannot and will never be able to have access to child care benefits,” Haspel said. 

Tyson said it’ll take a couple of years to figure out whether the program is Humboldt is effective.

“If it works, I’m sure more industry, and Tyson, will be investing in child care in some way,” said Tyson’s Garrett Dolan. 

Dolan said he was looking for an increase in worker retention and a decrease in absenteeism, along with an intangible benefit: a boost for the company’s reputation in the community.