When the news came late in the afternoon of Friday, Jan. 25, 2008, that Emporia’s Tyson plant was laying off 1,500 workers — 63 percent of its local workforce — many feared how far the effects would be felt.
“The economic repercussions of this event to the entire city will be phenomenal,” wrote one poster to The Gazette’s Web site just an hour after the announcement.
A year later, The Gazette looks back at what happened and whether the effects were as widespread as first feared.
What happened when
Jan. 25 — Tyson announces it will cease slaughter operations at its Emporia plant and expects to lay off 1,500 to 2,400 jobs.
Jan. 29 — A plan is discussed at the Kansas Department of Commerce in Topeka to help workers who will be jobless by March 25 as a result of Tyson Foods’ decision.
Feb. 6 — Tyson announces an additional layoff that will affect up to 300 workers.
Feb. 12 — Boy Scouts will distribute plastic grocery bags throughout Emporia on Saturday to help in a food drive for the Salvation Army in part to help families affected by the Tyson layoffs.
Feb. 16 — The city holds a job fair.
April 2 — The Dislocated Worker Center opens at Mary Herbert Learning Center to help anyone affected by the Tyson layoffs.
April 22 — The Dislocated Worker Center closes after clients dropped from 60 per day to about 25.
April 26 — Former and current Tyson employees meet with an attorney to learn more about possible claims against Tyson under the Fair Labor Standards Act.
March — The Ayan Cafe and Restaurant, 728 E. 12th Ave., closes without fanfare after Somalis leave the community.
June 18 — Lougene Marsh predicts in a Lyon County Commission meeting that the Flint Hills Community Health Center would see an increase in uninsured patients because of the Tyson layoffs.
July 9 — The Salvation Army food pantry makes another plea for food. The food supply has dwindled to near zero at the Salvation Army. Demand began to peak around the time of the Tyson layoffs.
Oct. 1 — Emporia city commissioners approve a 10.5 percent increase in water rates to compensate for the loss of revenue because the Tyson plant is using less water.
November — The Salvation Army gets an early start to lay in a supply of money, food and toys for its clients. Capt. Hope Burris estimates that the agency will serve 400 families for Christmas 2008.
Nov. 7 — Current Tyson workers vote against unionizing the local plant. The effort by the United Food and Commercial Workers union was the first at the Emporia plant since April 1971.
Reaching out to help
The Tyson workers’ crisis became the citizens’ crisis across Lyon County, as churches and other groups, businesses and individuals, as well as governmental entities came together to help.
Friends in Faith Serving Emporia immediately scheduled meetings of Tyson workers, holding gatherings at area churches and at the W.L. White Auditorium. LCAT provided transportation to the meetings at no charge for Tyson workers, and the Lyon County Restricted Emergency Fund began collecting donations specifically earmarked for displaced Tyson workers.
Within a few months, Tyson announced that it would honor its employees’ commitments to the United Way of the Flint Hills pledged for 2008.
The initial efforts in the community seemed scattered and diverse — though plentiful — but within a short time the United Way of the Flint Hills became the funnel through which formal aid materialized into a Displaced Worker Center at Mary Herbert Education Center. All sorts of assistance became available, through cooperation and coordination of numerous agencies working through the DWC.
Displaced workers — not limited to Tyson former employees — completed intake forms with the Salvation Army. Those helped define the sorts of assistance each family needed.
On site were representatives of not only the United Way and Salvation Army, but Social and Rehabilitation Services, the Mental Health Center of East Central Kansas, Kansas Gas Service, Westar Energy, Consumer Credit Counseling, Flint Hills Community Health Center, Newman Regional Health, KansasWorks and the Kansas Department of Labor.
Often, the DWC would reach its maximum workload of 60 families per day. The center closed in late April.
Still, the need for food, utility money and other assistance continued, and strained the budget and pantry shelves of the Salvation Army.
Capt. Jeremiah Burris said that workers gave out 213 bags of groceries at the DWC alone, and those were 213 bags that were not anticipated. The usual flow of requests for help from people outside the Tyson layoffs had continued.
Food drives and drop-off boxes proliferated at businesses, schools and churches to keep pantry shelves stocked, and Tyson donated additional meats specifically for its former workers in addition to the thousands of pounds it normally donates for Salvation Army’s needy.
Demand continues to be higher than normal for the Salvation Army, which estimated that it served about 400 families during its Christmas drives for food, funds and gifts.
• • •
The Mental Health Center of East Central Kansas began preparing for an increase in clients as soon as the Tyson plans were announced.
Director Bill Persinger contacted mental health professionals in other areas to learn more about counseling needs that might be anticipated for people undergoing major, widespread crises, both natural and manmade.
Persinger cautioned friends and family members to watch for signs that could indicate a need for help: mood swings, increased family tensions, talk of suicide and other behavior not exhibited under ordinary circumstances. And, people with pre-existing conditions, like substance abuse, family violence or a tendency toward depression and anxiety might be struggling more than usual. They, too, could need additional counseling.
The local mental health center also laid the groundwork for help and advice from the Healthier Community Alliance, an assembly of health, social, educational and support agencies, to work with the Tyson employees.
“If we get one person that steps forward, or 100 or 300, we’ll do whatever it takes to help those people,” Persinger said shortly after the Tyson announcement.
• • •
The Emporia Area Chamber of Commerce wasted little time in organizing a Job/Community Fair at the Flint Hills Technical College. Hundreds of unemployed workers poured into the campus throughout the day on Feb. 18 to talk with not only local businesses, but other packing company representatives from Kansas and other states.
Many of the packing companies offered financial incentives for workers to join their crews at other locations.
Volunteers put in about 300 man-hours to organize the successful event, which filled parking lots at the tech college and Emporia High School across the street. Inside, “wall-to-wall people” waited to visit the employer booths.
The response from the employers and agencies was unexpectedly high, too. Twenty-one Emporia-area employers, 30 agencies, and employers from six states filled the 116 booths at the fair.
— Bobbi Mlynar
City: Loss of revenue passed on
to consumers
Increased water rates and deferred capital improvement projects are some of the effects the Tyson layoffs have had on city operations, and the full impact of the layoffs is still being gauged.
Soon after the layoffs, there were dire predictions on how they would affect the city’s budget, but things didn’t turn out as badly as expected.
When the city prepared the 2009 budget in August, it projected a deficit of $264,112 for the general fund. Instead, the city ended up with a $348,983 surplus.
“We ended up with a healthy surplus in the general fund,” said City Manager Matt Zimmerman. “... I can’t say why yet, because we’re still working on those reports ... but financially, we did pretty well.”
The city felt a sizable impact in water collections. Before the layoffs, Tyson was responsible for about one-fifth of the city’s total water collections. According to Zimmerman, water collections ended up being $1,346,394 under budget for the year.
As a result, city and rural water rates saw a 10.5 percent hike that took effect Dec. 1.
“Sometimes you don’t realize your big industrial users — the benefit isn’t just the jobs or the taxes, it’s things like building-permit fees and utility fees and water sales,” Zimmerman said. “Everybody had lower water rates because Tyson was buying a lot of water, and that’s benefiting the residents in an indirect way. Now we’re seeing the results of that.”
Zimmerman said that the real impact for the city wasn’t financial.
“The real impact was that some big capital items weren’t done, and we can’t defer those indefinitely,” he said. “So in some ways, the chickens may come home to roost.”
The biggest projects to be deferred were the annual street rehabilitation program — a $300,000 budget cut — and the reduction of the hazardous sidewalk program from $100,000 to $10,000.
Zimmerman said it would be difficult to compare early projections with the actual impact as it is being felt right now, “one, because it plays itself out over several years, and two, there are so many other things that go into it that it’s hard to say.”
For instance, the city’s sales tax collections remained steady for the year, but it’s difficult to say whether that’s a result of higher prices or the community’s re-emphasis on the Shop Emporia First campaign.
“My personal opinion, and I can’t prove it, is that a lot of people took that message very seriously and said, ‘Hey, we need to rethink our shopping pattern,’ and I think that was a big part of it,” Zimmerman said. “So while clearly there was an impact, how many other outside factors that were a direct or indirect cause mitigating that, I don’t know.”
— Russ Morgan
County: Property valuation will
continue to affect budget
There was a lot of uncertainty in Lyon County government following Tyson’s January 2008 announcement that it would cease slaughter operations at the company in Emporia, and some effects have yet to be seen.
In 2008 there were a lot of budget uncertainties, as well as uncertainty with the county’s sales tax revenue and the housing market.
Lyon County Commission Chairman Scott Briggs said the county has not felt a significant impact to date. But, the housing market impact could be coming.
“I think it will be coming up because of the amount of housing that is available,” Briggs said. “We’re just now starting to see the effects of the valuation.”
Briggs said Emporia is seeing a lot more impact, especially with water rates and water usage. Tyson was a significant user of city water, he said.
“The amount of water that Tyson was using was a pretty good source of income for the city because they were using so much water,” Briggs said. “All the sudden they don’t use water anymore.”
Briggs said the county hasn’t seen a decrease in sales tax. Briggs said if sales tax revenue were to decrease in the county, it would be difficult to determine if it was from the Tyson layoffs or due to the economy.
“The numbers are holding pretty good yet,” he said.
— Brandy Nance
Tyson continues to invest in Emporia
Although employment numbers at Tyson Fresh Meats continue to be about 40 percent of what they were on Jan. 25, 2008, the number of workers at the plant is slightly higher than earlier predicted because of product additions and changes made since the announcement.
Tyson initially said it would cut its workforce by about 1,500 of its then-2,400 workers, leaving about 900 jobs in place. The company closed its slaughter division entirely and eliminated its second-shift production staff.
Soon after that announcement, Tyson said the cuts would affect an additional 200 to 300 workers, leaving an anticipated 600 to 700 workers.
“We currently employ about 1,000 people at the Emporia plant,” Tyson spokesman Gary Mickelson said this week. “Most of them work on our day shift. A small percentage work on second shift and are involved in various processing operations.”
Instead of slaughtering and traditional processing, the company has shifted its emphasis here to specialty work.
“(O)ur company has invested more than a million dollars in capital improvements in Emporia since announcing plans to convert the plant into a specialty beef operation,” Mickelson said. “We’ve spent money on new equipment and renovations, enabling us to do more beef boning, trimming and marinating. Our efforts have included bringing in processing equipment from other Tyson locations.”
The Emporia plant now produces products such as sliced beef, rotisserie pork and individually cut steaks for food service and retail delicatessen customers.
“We also continue to explore other product and customer opportunities so we can increase the volume of items we produce at Emporia,” Mickelson said.
— Bobbi Mlynar
Emporia schools: Legislative help softens blow
Like other cataclysmic events, the day of the Tyson downsizing announcement sticks in John Heim’s mind.
“I was going to a basketball game in Hutchinson,” Heim said. “I was headed west on Highway 50, I know that.”
One year after the Tyson downsizing, Emporia school district officials continue to wait to see the ultimate effect it will have on student population.
Heim, the superintendent of Emporia’s public schools, said last year that the district would have to base its budget and its employee numbers purely on speculation.
“We know that 1,200 of our students had one or more parents working at Tyson,” Heim said at that time.
Even with the certainty that some of the families would be gone by the end of the spring semester in May 2008, district officials knew that would not be the end of the transfers out of district.
“We have been told by other districts that have experienced significant job losses that the full impact probably will occur over two or three years,” Heim said then.
The district based its budget on the worst-case scenario and hoped for the best. It also asked local legislators to get a bill passed that would limit the Emporia district’s state aid to 98 percent of the 2007-08 school year. With that in place, district officials bought another year of planning and another year of watching student population.
In the interim, the district also implemented some financial changes to trim spending. It instituted a hiring freeze, amended the master contract to extend access to the district’s early retirement plan and notification bonus, and implemented a spending slowdown to build balances it could use for the coming school year, among other cutbacks.
The district also postponed two major capital improvement projects — at Village School and Lowther South Intermediate School — that already had funds encumbered in the budget.
Emporia National Education Association representatives agreed to accept a small salary increase of 1.5 percent and wait until September 2008 to see whether the district could afford a larger increase to 3.0 percent.
In the end, a better-case scenario emerged after students were counted on Sept. 20. The state of Kansas uses enrollment figures from Sept. 20 each year to calculate state aid to individual districts.
“It turned out we thought we’d lose between 600 and 800 students. We missed it bad,” Heim said, adding that was a good thing.”
The district actually lost fewer than 200 students, and is now performing a weekly count of student losses or additions.
With the budget-stabilizing help from the legislature, and an unfortunate increase in the number of low-income students on free and reduced-price lunches, the district ended up with approximately $2.4 million more than it had believed possible under its initial worst-case budget.
“In fact, because of the way the formula works because of the at-risk funding ... we ended up a lot better off than we would have, even in a normal year,” Heim said.
Now, the administrators and school board members are preparing to work on the district budget for the 2009-10 school year and, again, they will try to estimate how many Tyson-related students will leave the district before the school year starts in August.
At the beginning of this semester just three weeks ago, the district had lost another 79 students since the Sept. 20 count.
“And in a typical year, based upon our somewhat sketchy records, we lose between 80 and 100 kids in a year, between Sept. 20 and the end of May,” Heim said. “You could speculate that we’re a little ahead of schedule. ... It’s hard to make that conjecture completely. I think it’s safe to say we’ve lost a few more students” than usual.
Heim is optimistic that the Emporia district will have another year to adjust financially to changes in student population or state aid.
“Remember, we’re starting from a $2.4 million advantage, I guess, so yeah, we’ll be OK,” Heim said.
— Bobbi Mlynar
Health center picks up patients
who lost insurance
The Flint Hills Community Health center wasn’t immune to the effects that the Tyson layoffs had on the Emporia community.
In June 2008, Lougene Marsh, executive director of the Flint Hills Community Health Center and Lyon County Health Department, told Lyon County commissioners that there was uncertainty about the potential increase in the number of uninsured patients because of the Tyson layoffs. This was during county budget time when she was asking for funding for the health center to stay level.
If former Tyson employees left the community and the services at the community health center, Marsh said it would be a double loss for the health center — a loss in financial compensation for employees and a loss in the number of patients they serve, a March 27 article in the Gazette stated.
This week, Marsh said the effects of the Tyson layoffs were as she expected. Marsh said she was concerned about loss of patients and revenue — and neither has had a major impact.
“Overall, the number of patients which we have seen have remained fairly stable,” Marsh said. “We had a significant number of Somali patients, and the departure of that population from our community did have an impact.”
The health center has seen an overall increase in the number of uninsured patients.
“We are seeing fewer patients with private insurance,” Marsh said. “In 2007, we had 800 patients that had Tyson health insurance and we believe that the loss of employment and consequently health insurance, is a contributing factor with private insurance seen in 2008.”
The center also saw more Medicaid patients in 2008.
“This may also be tied to the Tyson reduction in force as parents pursued Medicaid/HealthWave eligibility for their children after losing Tyson health insurance,” Marsh said, adding that more patients have incomes that are 100 percent of the Federal Poverty Level, which could be due to the economy and Tyson layoffs.
“The most direct funding impact (came) from increase/decrease in fees charged/collected for services. Long-term significant decreases in patients could potentially affect other sources of funding such as grants.”
— By Brandy Nance
Somalis come and go
The Tyson downsizing directly caused the closing of at least one local business.
The Ayan Restaurant at 728 E. 12th Ave., which served foods native to Somalia, opened at the end of May 2006, after Tyson began hiring Somali refugees for the local plant.
The death of a Somali employee at the Tyson plant, however, brought a firestorm of anti-Tyson and anti-Somali rhetoric when the cause of death was identified as active tuberculosis.
Segments of the community were concerned that the Somalis, who commonly carried latent or active tuberculosis from the refugee camps, would spark an outbreak of the respiratory disease in the community.
When Tyson closed its slaughter floor, the majority of Somalis transferred to other Tyson plants. The Ayan closed, too.
While they were here, the refugees, as a group, were eager to learn. Many had enrolled in English classes through the Emporia school district and Emporia State University, and others who already spoke English enrolled in classes for credit toward degrees. The Emporia Alternative School was moved to a larger location at 1624 Industrial Road to accommodate the increased enrollment.
— Bobbi Mlynar
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Posted by sciguy (anonymous) on January 26, 2009 at 12:25 a.m. (Suggest removal)
It is unfortunate that the contribution made by the Emporia Public Library was left out of this story. Tyson employees and families found internet access, help with accessing unemployment and job search sites, and help in finding relocation information at the library.
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