A pall hung over the room, just like during the holidays in Lexington, Nebraska.
“All of a sudden they tell us there’s no more work. Your world is closing in on you,” Alejandra Gutierrez said.
Hundreds of families may be forced to pack their belongings and leave the city of 11,000 inhabitants, heading east Omaha or Iowaor south to the meatpacking towns in Kansas or beyondcausing layoffs in Lexington’s restaurants, barbershops, grocers, convenience stores and taco trucks.
“The loss of 3,000 jobs in a city of 10,000 to 12,000 residents is as big a capstone event as we’ve seen virtually in decades,” said Michael Hicks, director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at Ball State University in Indiana. It will be “close to being the poster child in tough times.”
All told, job losses are expected to reach 7,000, largely in Lexington and surrounding counties, according to estimates from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, shared with The Associated Press. Tyson employees alone will lose an estimated $241 million annually in wages and benefits.
Tyson says it is closing the plant to right-size its beef business after a historic lowland cattle livestock in the US and the company’s expected loss of $600 million beef production next financial year.
The plant’s closure threatens to unravel a Great Plains town where the American Dream was still attainable, where immigrants who spoke no English and never graduated from high school bought homes, raised children in a safe community and sent them to college.
Now those symbols of economic progress – mortgages and car payments, property taxes and college tuition – are bills that thousands of Tyson workers will have no income to pay.
At St. Ann’s Church, Gutierrez sat among her daughters and recalled being informed of the plant’s closure just before Thanksgiving while visiting a college campus with her high school student Kimberly.
“At that moment my daughter said she didn’t want to go to college anymore,” Gutierrez said. ‘Because where do we get the money to pay for our studies?’
A tear slid down Kimberly’s cheek as she looked at her mother and then at her hands.
‘Tyson was our motherland’
If you were to throw a dart at a map of the United States, Lexington – called “Lex” by locals – would almost be a bull’s-eye.
It’s easy to miss Interstate 80, half-hidden by barren hackberry trees, corn fields and pastures of Black Angus cattle, but a driver can spy the factory’s massive industrial buildings pumping steam.
The plant opened in 1990 and was purchased by Tyson eleven years later, attracting thousands of workers and nearly doubling the city’s population within a decade.
Many came from Los Angeles, which was then hit by a recession, including Lizeth Yanes, who initially hated what she called “a little ghost town.”
But soon Lexington blossomed, with suburbs sprouting among bur oaks and American elms. In the downtown area, a strip of cobblestone streets and brick buildings, is a Somali grocer adjacent to a Spanish bakery; locals visit more than a dozen churches and several city recreation centers.
To this day, the factory keeps the rhythm of the city as workers move in and out of the daily A, B and C shifts and fill restaurants, school pick-up lines and the single-screen movie theater showing “Polar Express.”
“It took me a long time to really enjoy this little place,” Yanes said. “Now that I’m enjoying it, I have to leave now.”
The atmosphere at the Tyson plant, where workers process as many as 5,000 head of cattle a day, working on the slaughter floor, cleaning shifts or cutting cuts of meat, feels “like a funeral,” she said.
“Tyson was our motherland,” said factory worker Arab Adan. The Kenyan immigrant sat in his car with his two energetic sons, who asked him a question he has no answer to: “Which state are we going to, Dad?”
All Adan wants is for his children to finish the school year in Lexington, where school officials say nearly half of the students have a parent who works for Tyson.
The school district, where at least two dozen languages and dialects are spoken, has higher rates of high school graduation and college attendance than the state and national averages and is one of Nebraska’s largest marching bands. Residents are proud of the diversity and close-knit community, where young people return to raise families.
During Mass at St. Ann’s, parishioners gave the money in their pockets to a fund for families in financial need, despite knowing they would be out of work next month. Then Francisco Antonio discussed his future employment options with a sad smile.
After the plant closed on Jan. 20, the 52-year-old father of four said he would stay in Lexington for a few months to look for work, although “there is no future now.” He took off his glasses, paused, apologized, and tried to explain his emotions.
“It’s mostly at home, not work,” he said, replacing his glasses with an embarrassed smile.
“We need another opportunity here at Lex, a job,” he said. “Otherwise Lex will disappear.”
‘Tyson owes this community something’
The domino effect could go something like this: If a thousand families skip town, says economist Hicks — who wouldn’t be surprised if that number doubles — there would be empty seats in schools, leading to teacher layoffs; there would be far fewer customers in restaurants, stores and other businesses.
Most of the customers at Los Jalapenos, a Mexican restaurant down the street from the factory, are Tyson employees. They fill the stalls after work and are greeted by the mustachioed grin of owner Armando Martinez and the roar of “Hola, amigo!”
Martinez’s grandson once told his grandfather that he wants to work for Tyson when he grows up. The child’s fifth-grader sister recently gathered with classmates to talk about the changes taking place in their parents. Some were headed to California, others to Kansas. They were all in tears.
If he can’t keep up with the bills, the restaurant will close, but “we have nowhere to go,” says Martinez, who is on dialysis for diabetes, has an amputated foot and is praying for a miracle: that Tyson will change his mind.
He knows it’s unlikely. Asked by The Associated Press for comment on plans for the site, Tyson said in a statement that it is “currently assessing how we can repurpose the plant within our own manufacturing network.” The company did not provide details or say whether it plans to provide support to the community through the plant closure.
Many, including City Manager Joe Pepplitsch, hope Tyson will put the plant up for sale and a new company will emerge that will create jobs. That’s not a quick fix, requiring time, negotiations, renovations and no guarantee of comparable jobs.
“Tyson owes this community a debt. I think they have a responsibility here to mitigate some of the impact,” he said, noting that Tyson doesn’t pay city taxes because of a deal made decades ago.
‘At our age it is not easy to go back and start again’
Near the plant, at the Dawson County Fairgrounds, Tyson workers recently filled a long hall as government agencies — responding to the urgency of a natural disaster — offered information on retraining, writing a resume, filing unemployment benefits and avoiding scammers when selling homes.
The faces of those present were subdued, as if they were listening to a doctor’s prognosis. “Your financial health is going to change,” they were told. “Don’t ignore the bank, they won’t go away.”
Many of the older workers do not speak English, have not completed high school and are not computer savvy. The last application some people filled out was decades ago.
“We know we only work for Tyson in the meat sector, we have no other experience,” says Adan, the Kenyan immigrant.
Back at St. Ann’s, workers echoed those concerns.
“They only want young people now,” said Juventino Castro, who has worked at Tyson for a quarter of a century. “I don’t know what’s going to happen in the time I have left.”
Lupe Ceja said she has some money saved, but that won’t last long. Luz Alvidrez has a cleaning job that will keep her busy for a while. Others may return to Mexico for a while. No one has a clear plan.
“It won’t be easy,” said Fernando Sanchez, who has been with Tyson for 35 years and was sitting with his wife. “We started from scratch here and it’s time to start from scratch again.”
Tears rolled down his wife’s cheeks and he squeezed her hand.
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