LEXINGTON, Neb. (AP) — On a cold day after Mass at St. Ann Catholic Church in rural Nebraska, parishioners crawled into the basement and sat on folding chairs, their faces barely hiding the fear that had gripped their town.
A curtain hung over the room just as it had over the holiday season in Lexington, Nebraska.
“All of a sudden they tell us there are no more jobs. Your world is closing down on you,” Alejandra Gutierrez said.
She and others work at the Tyson Foods beef plant and are among 3,200 people who will lose their jobs when Lexington's largest employer closes the plant next month after more than two decades in business.
Hundreds of families could be forced to pack up and leave the city of 11,000, heading east to Omaha or Iowa or south to the beef towns of Kansas and beyond, leading to additional layoffs at Lexington restaurants, hair salons, grocers, convenience stores and taco trucks.
“The loss of 3,000 jobs in a city of 10,000 to 12,000 people is as big a closing event as we've seen in virtually decades,” said Michael Hicks, director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at Indiana Ball State University. He will be “close to a model in difficult times.”
Overall, job losses are expected to reach 7,000, mostly in Lexington and surrounding counties, according to University of Nebraska-Lincoln estimates shared by The Associated Press. Tyson employees alone will lose about $241 million in wages and benefits annually.
Tyson says it is closing the plant to “streamline” its beef business following historically low U.S. cattle numbers and the company's expected $600 million loss from beef production in the next fiscal year.
The plant's closure threatens to destroy a Great Plains town where the American dream was still within reach, where immigrants who didn't speak English and didn't graduate from high school bought houses, 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 costs—are bills that thousands of Tyson workers won't be able to pay.
At St. Anne's Church, Gutierrez sat between her daughters and recalled being told about the plant's closure just before Thanksgiving while she was visiting a college campus with her high school friend, Kimberly.
“At that point, my daughter said she didn’t want to study anymore,” Gutierrez said. “Because where are we going to get the money to pay for college?”
A tear rolled down Kimberly's cheek as she looked at her mother and then at her hands.
“Tyson was our homeland”
If you threw a dart at a map of the United States, Lexington, known locally as “The Lex,” would be almost in the bull's eye.
It's easy to miss driving along Interstate 80, half hidden by barren hackberry trees, corn fields and pastures of Black Angus cattle, but the driver can see the huge industrial plant buildings pumping steam.
The plant opened in 1990 and was purchased by Tyson 11 years later, attracting thousands of workers and nearly doubling the city's population within a decade.
Many came from then-recessioned Los Angeles, including Lisette Jans, who initially hated what she called “the little ghost town.”
But Lexington soon flourished, its suburbs sprouting up among bur oaks and American elms. Downtown, a strip of cobblestone streets and brick buildings, has a Somali grocery store adjacent to a Latin American bakery; local residents attend more than a dozen churches and several city recreation centers.
To this day, the plant sets the rhythm of the city: workers come and go from daily A, B and C shifts, filling restaurants, lines from schools and a one-screen movie theater showing “The Polar Express.”
“It took me a long time to really enjoy this little place,” Yanez said. “Now that I enjoy it, I’ll have to leave.”
The atmosphere at the Tyson plant, where workers process up to 5,000 head of cattle a day, labor in slaughterhouses, and clean or cut up cuts of meat, is reminiscent of a “funeral,” she said.
“Tyson was our home,” said factory worker Arab Adan. A Kenyan immigrant sat in his car with his two energetic sons, who asked him a question to which he had no answer: “Which state are we going to, daddy?”
Adan's only hope is for his children to finish the school year in Lexington, where school officials say nearly half the students have parents who work for Tyson.
With at least 20 languages and dialects spoken, this school district has high school graduation and college attendance rates higher than the state and national averages and boasts one of Nebraska's largest marching bands. Residents take pride in the diversity and close-knit community where young people return to raise families.
During Mass at St. Anne's Church, parishioners gave cash from their pockets to a fund to help families in need, despite knowing they would be out of work next month. After this, Francisco Antonio spoke with a sad smile about his future job opportunities.
After the plant closed on Jan. 20, the 52-year-old father of four said he would stay in Lexington for a few months and look for work, even though there was “no future for him now.” He took off his glasses, paused, apologized and tried to explain his emotions.
“It’s mostly home, not work,” he said, smiling sheepishly as he replaced his glasses.
“We need another opportunity, a job here in Lex,” he said. “Otherwise Lex will disappear.”
“Tyson owes it to this community.”
The domino effect might look something like this: If 1,000 families left the city, says economist Hicks (who wouldn't be surprised if the figure doubled), school seats would be left empty, leading to teacher layoffs; restaurants, stores and other businesses will have far fewer customers.
Most of the customers at Los Jalapenos, a Mexican restaurant located near the plant, are Tyson employees. They fill the booths after work and are greeted by owner Armando Martinez's mustachioed grin and a roar of “Hello, amigo!”
Martinez's grandson once told his grandfather that when he grew up, he wanted to work for Tyson. The child's fifth-grade sister recently gathered with her classmates to talk about the changes happening to their parents. Some were heading to California, others to Kansas. Everyone was in tears.
If he can't pay the bills, the restaurant will close, but “we just have nowhere to go,” said Martinez, who is undergoing 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 to comment on plans for the facility, Tyson said in a statement that he was “currently evaluating how we can repurpose the facility as part of our own manufacturing network.” The company did not provide details or say whether it plans to offer support to the public through the plant closure.
Many, including City Manager Joe Peplich, are hopeful that Tyson will put the plant up for sale and a new company will emerge to create jobs. This is not a quick fix, requiring time, negotiations, repairs and no guarantee of comparable jobs.
“Tyson owes it to this community. I think they have an obligation here to help mitigate some of the impacts,” he said, noting that Tyson has not paid city taxes under a deal struck decades ago.
“At our age it’s not easy to go back and start over”
Next door to the plant at the Dawson County Fairgrounds, Tyson workers recently filled a long hall where government agencies, responding to the urgency of the disaster, offered information on retraining, writing resumes, filing for unemployment and avoiding scammers in home sales.
The faces of those present were subdued, as if they were listening to a doctor’s prognosis. “Your financial situation will change,” they were told. “Don’t ignore the bank, they’re not going anywhere.”
Many of the older workers do not speak English, have not completed high school, and are not computer literate. The last application some filled out was several decades ago.
“We know that we only work with meat for Tyson, we have no other experience,” said Adan, an immigrant from Kenya.
Back in Sainte-Anne, workers echoed these concerns.
“Right now they only want young people,” said Juventino Castro, who worked at Tyson for a quarter of a century. “I don’t know what will happen in the time I have left.”
Lupe Ceja said she saved some money, but it won't last long. Luz Alvidrez has a cleaning job that will keep her going for a while. Others may return to Mexico for a while. Nobody has a clear plan.
“It won't be easy,” said Fernando Sanchez, a 35-year-old Tysons employee who 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.
