When Tyson Foods revealed earlier this month they would be closing one of their plants in Perry, Iowa, which employed over 1,000 people in a town of under 8,000, it was a devastating blow to the community, though one that wasn’t necessarily a surprise.
Between a wildly difficult 2023 for pork producers, where lower hog prices and higher feed costs led to an average loss of $32 per hog, and previous announcements regarding the closure of other plants in Arkansas, Indiana and Missouri after reported third quarter losses, it seemed like just another casualty of a difficult year. According to local reports, Tyson invited Perry plant employees to apply for other jobs at their remaining plants in Iowa (in Waterloo, Storm Lake and Columbus Junction) and it could have ended at that — until Bloomberg ran a story that same day with the headline “Tyson Is Hiring New York Immigrants for Jobs No One Else Wants.”
