LEXINGTON, Neb. (AP) — On a chilly day after mass at St. Ann’s in rural Nebraska, worshipers filed into the basement and sat in folding chairs, their faces barely hiding the fear that gripped their town.
A hood hung over the room, just as it did during the holidays in Lexington, Nebraska.
“Suddenly they tell us that there is no more work. Your world closes inside you,” said Alejandra Gutierrez.
She and the others work at Tyson Foods’ beef plant and are among the 3,200 people who will lose their jobs when Lexington’s largest employer closes the plant next month after more than two decades of operation.
Hundreds of families could be forced to pack up and leave the town of 11,000, heading east to Omaha or Iowa, or south to the meatpacking towns of Kansas and beyond, prompting layoffs at 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 people is as large a shutdown event as we’ve seen in virtually decades,” said Michael Hicks, director of the Center for Economic and Business Research at Ball State University in Indiana. It will be “close to the poster child for hard times.”
In all, the job losses are expected to reach 7,000, mostly in Lexington and surrounding counties, according to University of Nebraska-Lincoln estimates shared with The Associated Press. Tyson employees alone will lose about $241 million in wages and benefits annually.
Tyson says it is closing the plant to “right-size” its beef business after a historically low U.S. cattle herd and the company’s projected loss of $600 million in beef production next fiscal year.
The plant’s closing threatens to destroy 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—mortgage and car payments, property taxes and tuition costs—are bills that thousands of Tyson workers won’t have an income to pay.
At the church of St. Ann, Gutierrez sat between her daughters and recalled being told about the plant’s closing just before Thanksgiving while visiting a college campus with Kimberly, her high school senior.
“At that point, my daughter said she didn’t want to study anymore,” Gutierrez said. “Because where would we get the money to pay for college?”
A tear slides down Kimberly’s cheek as she looks at her mother and then at her hands.
“Tyson was our homeland”
If you were to drop a dart on a map of the United States, Lexington — called “Lex” by the locals — would be just the thing.
It’s easy to miss driving Interstate 80, half-hidden by barren forest trees, cornfields and Black Angus cattle pastures, but a driver can spy the giant industrial buildings of the steam-pumping factory.
The factory opened in 1990 and was bought by Tyson 11 years later, attracting thousands of workers and nearly doubling the city’s population within a decade.
Many came from Los Angeles, then hit by the recession, including Lizeth Yanes, who initially hated what she called “a little ghost town.”
But soon Lexington blossomed, with suburbs springing up among the American oaks and elms. Downtown, a strip of cobblestone streets and brick buildings, has a Somali grocer adjoined by a Hispanic bakery; locals attend over a dozen churches and several recreation centers in the city.
To this day, the factory sets the pace for the city as workers trudge through the daily A, B and C shifts and fill restaurants, school pickup lines and the single-screen movie theater showing “The Polar Express.”
“It took me a long time to enjoy this little place,” Yanes said. “Now that I like it, now I have to go.”
The atmosphere inside the Tyson plant, where workers process up to 5,000 head of cattle a day, working on slaughterhouse floors, cleaning teams or trimming cuts of meat, feels “like a funeral,” she said.
“Tyson was our homeland,” said Arab Adan, a factory worker. The Kenyan immigrant was sitting in the car with his two energetic sons, who asked him a question he has no answer to: “Which state are we going to, Dad?”
The only thing Adan is watching is for his kids to finish the school year in Lexington, where school officials say nearly half the students have a parent who works for Tyson.
The school district, where at least 20 languages and dialects are spoken, has high school graduation and college attendance rates higher than the national and state averages and one of the largest marching bands in Nebraska. Residents are proud of the diversity and close-knit community where young people return to raise families.
During the Liturgy at St. Ann’s, parishioners gave their pocket money to a fund for needy families, despite knowing they would be unemployed next month. After that, Francisco Antonio went through his future employment options with a sad smile.
After the plant closes Jan. 20, the 52-year-old father of four said he will stay in Lexington for a few months and look for work, though “there’s no future right now.” He took off his glasses, paused, apologized and tried to explain his emotions.
“He’s mostly at home, not at work,” he said, replacing his glasses with an awkward smile.
“We need another opportunity, a job, here in Lex,” he said. “Otherwise Lex will disappear.”
“Tyson owes this community”
The domino effect could go something like this: If 1,000 families leave across town, said economist Hicks — who wouldn’t be surprised if it were double that — seats would be left vacant in schools, leading to teacher layoffs; there would be far fewer customers in restaurants, shops and other businesses.
Most of the customers at Los Jalapenos, a Mexican restaurant next to the plant, are Tyson workers. They fill the booths after work and are greeted by owner Armando Martinez’s mustachioed smile and shout of “Hola, amigo!”
Martinez’s grandson once told his grandfather that he wanted to work at Tyson when he grew up. The fifth-grader’s sister recently gathered with classmates to talk about the changes taking place with their parents. Some were headed for California, others for Kansas. Everyone was in tears.
If he can’t keep up with the bills, the restaurant will close, but “we just can’t go,” said Martinez, who is on dialysis for diabetes, has a leg amputated 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 evaluating how we can repurpose the facility into our own production network.” It did not provide details or say whether it plans to offer support to the community by closing the plant.
Many, including City Manager Joe Pepplitsch, hope Tyson will put the plant up for sale and a new company will bring jobs. This is not a quick fix, requiring time, negotiations, renovations and no guarantee of comparable jobs.
“Tyson owes a debt to this community. I think they have a responsibility here to help mitigate the impact,” he said, noting that Tyson doesn’t pay city taxes because of a settlement negotiated decades ago.
“It’s not easy at our age to go back and start over”
Near the plant, at the Dawson County Fairgrounds, Tyson workers recently filled a long hall as state agencies — responding to the urgency of a natural disaster — offered information about retraining, writing a resume, filing for unemployment and avoiding scams when selling homes.
The faces of the participants were subdued, as if listening to a doctor’s prognosis. “Your financial health will 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 graduated from high school, and are not computer literate. The last application filled out by some was decades ago.
“We know we only work in the flesh for Tyson, we have no other experience,” said Adan, the Kenyan immigrant.
Back to St. Ann’s, workers echoed that concern.
“They only want young people now,” said Juventino Castro, who has worked at Tyson for a quarter century. “I don’t know what will happen in the time I have left.”
Lupe Ceja said he saved some money, but it won’t last long. Luz Alvidrez has a cleaning gig that will sustain her for a while. Others may return to Mexico for a time. No one has a clear plan.
“It’s not going to be easy,” said Fernando Sanchez, a 35-year-old Tyson worker who stayed with his wife. “We started from scratch here, and it’s time to start from scratch again.”
Tears streamed down his wife’s cheeks and he squeezed her hand.