Photo by Bobbi Mlynar
Juan and Sally Sanchez live on a tight budget since he was laid off from Tyson in January. The budget will be tighter now that the original unemployment benefits have run out.
Juan Sanchez never expected to have to draw unemployment.
He began working on a farm in Texas when he was 10 years old and never stopped — until Tyson Foods shut down its slaughter operation and one processing shift in Emporia on Jan. 25 of this year.
Sanchez’s initial unemployment benefits ran out last week, and he has not decided yet whether he will apply for the extension that many former Tyson workers will be eligible to draw.
“Some of them are still getting unemployment and they were going to get their extensions, which gives them, what, another 13 weeks?” he said.
For 33 years, Sanchez worked in the cattle chutes of the IBP and, later, Tyson slaughter department.
He enjoyed his job, particularly because it involved being outside most of the day. Weather didn’t bother him much; he’d put on layers of clothing when the weather was cold and take them off when it wasn’t. It was being outdoors that made the job enjoyable.
There had been rumors about what Tyson might be planning, Sanchez said, but none of them had been as severe as the company’s announcement that resulted in the elimination of approximately 1,600 to 1,700 jobs.
“I had heard that they might go to one shift on slaughter, one shift on processing,” Sanchez said during an interview this week.
On the other hand, he and his coworkers had been relatively confident that they were doing good work at the plant, because of what they’d heard from managers.
“They’d say we’re the most efficient plant in the country, and I’d think, ‘Well, I don’t have to worry about that,’” he said.
He had not expected anything more than a small cutback when company officials called in all of A Shift and then B Shift to a meeting in the Tyson cafeteria.
“That cafeteria was packed,” Sanchez said. Workers were sitting in chairs and standing in rows ringing the room. Sanchez remembered the feeling after he and his co-workers heard that Tyson would eliminate both shifts on the slaughter side of the plant, as well as one shift on the processing side.
“I think everybody who walked out of the cafeteria that day had their mouths open,” he said. “They were in shock.”
With 33 years of employment at the meat-packing plant, it seemed impossible that such a shutdown could happen. He had expected to retire from Tyson.
Moving here
Sanchez came to Emporia from Texas, via Chicago. His girlfriend’s family, also from Texas, had settled in Emporia, and he came in from Chicago, where he worked, to visit her.
“We’re high school sweethearts,” Sally Sanchez explained.
“We’re second-grade sweethearts,” Juan interjected. “I used to chase her around the playground.”
Juan soon moved to Emporia and the couple married. He got a job with an oil company and was happy to change careers when a Tyson manager offered him a job during a tour of the plant with Sally’s father, who had worked there 16 years.
Now, the Sanchezes are trying to adjust to life as a one wage-earner family. Both of their children are adults. One of them attends the University of Kansas and another has settled into a career in Wichita. The couple is relieved they don’t have young children to feed and clothe and put through school. Still, it is not easy.
“At our age, it’s tough. It’s like starting over,” Sally Sanchez said. “There were a lot of cutbacks. We have a son who’s going to college, and he kind of had to step in and get some extra hours on the job.”
They’ve adjusted their budget to get by on a minimum, which means no money for eating out or treating themselves to extras, as people their age would expect to be able to do.
When Juan was working, he often took breakfast tacos to work as treats for his co-workers.
“I used to get up about 4 in the morning and make about 10 tacos,” he said.
Now, the budget wouldn’t allow that, even if he could get together with his former work buddies.
Sally got health insurance for both of them, at added cost, through her job as a secretary at Emporia High School.
And Juan looked for jobs. Each week he made applications to potential employers or enrolled in workshops to help make him more employable. Later, he updated job applications that he had made earlier.
“When I went to Norfolk, the lady told me, ‘I got 43 applications before yours,” he said. “I said, ‘Put mine on top.’”
He wasn’t called for an interview. The only interview he has gotten, he said, was at Fanestil’s, and he never got a callback.
Sanchez would prefer a job working outdoors and has experience as a welder, though he also is interested in interpreting. He previously has done interpretation informally and also helped translate for the Displaced Worker Center, a community-wide services group operated with oversight by the United Way of the Flint Hills. The center was intended primarily to help displaced Tyson workers.
One of them, Juan said, asked to be taken to Tyson to turn in an application soon after the downsizing.
“I want to be one of the first called back,” Sanchez remembered the worker telling him.
Some of them have been called back, but most have not. Most of the younger workers already have left Emporia; many of the jobs here demand a degree of youth.
“You have to realize, too, that most of the people working at Tyson were 30 or younger. They didn’t have kids yet. The younger people left first. They were renting,” Juan said.
“The ones that stayed are the ones with kids who owned their house, who couldn’t sell their house.”
Some of them found jobs in other parts of Kansas, like Ottawa and Neodesha, and commute either daily or on days off.
“They told me they get up at 3 o’clock in the morning to get to work by six,” he said of some of the former Tyson workers.
A few others have moved out-of-state to accept similar jobs, while their wives and children stay here until their homes sell.
Those families’ leaving could affect enrollment and create budget problems for the Emporia school district, the couple said.
“I think in the next two months we’re going to find out what’s going to happen,” Juan said.
Many former Tyson workers want to remain here, however, because of the school district and the community itself. It is a good place to raise children, they said.
“They don’t call this ‘home,’” but still they like being here,” Juan said. “I think most of them plan to stay.”
The Sanchezes, too, plan to stay until Sally can retire in two years. Then they will return to Texas to be available to help take care of their mothers, who are in their 80s.
Until then, or until Juan gets a job or training for another job, they will be fiscally conservative and get by as best they can.
“I’d never been on a budget like this, so I have to watch what I spend,” Juan said.
The Tyson cut caused not only a loss of paycheck, it caused a loss of other benefits.
“Insurance was the big one,” Sally said. “I had to pick up that.”
Sanchez said he initially had been discouraged by not being able to get a job.
“I kind of gave up,” he said. “I’ll just stay home.”
Helping others
Sally, however, had something else in mind. She thought her husband needed to get out in the community rather than withdraw into the haven of their home.
“You’ll feel good about yourself,” she recalled telling Juan. “It’s so rewarding helping others.”
Sanchez had experience in being a leader; he helped organize the Hispanics of Today and Tomorrow and all of its annual activities and fundraising events. He currently is president of the group.
So he volunteered at the Salvation Army and continues to help there regularly. He interprets as needed, helps hand out food and merchandise, and lends a hand where he is needed. He saw the number of Tyson workers still needing aid as he did his volunteer work. The latest reminder was shortly before school started.
“There were people coming in left and right, people needing school supplies,” he said. “...There’s a lot of people hurting.”
He described the volunteer work as a satisfying task until he can be employed again.
“Something will come along,” he said. “I’m staying optimistic.”
Sanchez holds out hope that Tyson could expand its operation here again.
“I think eventually, it’s my thinking, they’re going to reopen slaughter someday,” Juan said, giving evidence of his continued optimism. “I keep thinking, the building’s still there, the cattle pens are still there. ...
“I’m not bitter to Tyson. They gave me 33 years of work. I raised two children, paid for my house. So I’m not bitter.”
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