TELL ME YA CHEESIN FAM?
I walk around a little edgy already
Rural town braces for Tyson plant closure as manufacturing booms elsewhere
The meat giant is closing six chicken processing sites in Missouri, Indiana, Arkansas and Virginia, laying off more than 4,600 workers who have long relied on its outsize presence as a local employer.
"A Tyson spokesperson said its “difficult decisions” to close the six poultry plants “are necessary to improve performance and demonstrate our commitment to taking bold actions to improve our business moving forward. At the same time, we continue to invest for the future across communities in the U.S.”
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Tyson said it’s encouraging workers at closing plants to apply for other roles internally and is offering relocation assistance to those it rehires. The company has rehired at least 47 employees out of the nearly 1,000 it laid off at the Van Buren, Arkansas, plant it closed in May. And in Noel, Tyson is planning more job events like the one Handy attended, offering chances to meet with one or just a few employers at a time.
The poultry industry has been battered by a global avian flu outbreak and ballooning grain costs, but Tyson has also struggled with its own inefficiencies, said Kristoffer Inton, a Morningstar analyst who covers the company. Those include difficulties balancing how much meat it grows versus buys from other producers.
“The cost of feed went up, but that affected everybody,” said Inton. “You could probably chalk up some of it to stuff that affected the entire industry and some of it to [things] Tyson should have done better.”
