March 18, 2024 (EIRNS)—Over the past year Tyson Foods has announced that it will close eight meatpacking plants, laying off thousands of U.S. workers. The latest closure is the Tyson pork packing plant in Perry, Iowa. Announced this month, the closure in July will end 1,276 jobs, reportedly mostly Hispanic, which is the norm in U.S. meat processing.
Meanwhile, an official for the company declared it would hire 42,000 migrants “if we could find them.” Tyson is now involved in at least one non-profit group working with asylum-seeking migrants in New York, and is even offering the services of immigration lawyers as an incentive. Right on cue, the America First Legal crowd is out to defend its piece of the shrinking pie: a “Boycott Tyson” campaign is underway against its hiring of migrants.
Tyson is one of the top five meat processors in the United States, whose cartel includes JBS, Smithfield (WH Holdings), Cargill, National Beef Packing/Marfrig, and others. All of them are significantly cutting back on processing capacity, and the national cattle herd is at its lowest number since the 1950s. Tyson, according to various accounts, has 120,000 workers, of whom 40,000 are immigrants. This seems a low estimate, and major media reports are all over the place on the actual facts. Scripps News even retracted its Tyson story this week.
