Emporia prepares for lost Tyson jobs
BY DAN VOORHIS
The Wichita Eagle
Maricela Ocampo has suffered from depression and blood pressure issues after learning she and 1,500 other beef processing employees were being laid off from Tyson in Emporia. She and her family have placed their Emporia home on the market.
Mike Hutmacher/The Wichita Eagle
Maricela Ocampo has suffered from depression and blood pressure issues after learning she and 1,500 other beef processing employees were being laid off from Tyson in Emporia. She and her family have placed their Emporia home on the market.
Maricela Ocampo has suffered from depression and blood pressure issues after learning she and 1,500 other beef processing employees were being laid off from Tyson in Emporia. She and her family have placed their Emporia home on the market. Tyson beef processing plant in Emporia. Tyson beef processing plant in Emporia. Employees leave the Tyson beef processing plant in Emporia after their shift. A Tyson beef processing plant worker prods a steer onto the killing floor chute in Emporia.
* Tyson layoffs surprise few in industry
* Garden City ready for ex-Tyson workers
EMPORIA PREPARES FOR LOST TYSON JOBS
The massive Tyson Foods plant sits on the west edge of Emporia like an anchor keeping the town from blowing away. The cattle slaughtering and processing plant has for decades been the city's largest employer. It provides more than 10 percent of the jobs in a two-county area, along with the characteristic stockyard smell.
That's why when Tyson announced Jan. 25 that it was laying off 1,500 of its 2,400 workers, the town was gripped by shock, then anger and panic. By midweek that had settled into a deep anxiety.
The best estimate is that the layoff will take $65 million to $75 million out of the $900 million Emporia-area economy.
And lurking in the background is the fate of the 700-employee Dolly Madison Cakes plant. The
owner, Interstate Bakeries, is close to presenting a plan to emerge from bankruptcy, but what that means for the plant is unclear.
The one bright spot is that the community has an unemployment rate of just 4 percent and has jobs going unfilled because of the tight labor market. But the layoff could push that to 7 to 8 percent, officials said Friday.
Bracing for the impact
The community is planning furiously as it waits a few weeks to get a clearer read on the impact of the Tyson layoffs.
The plant stopped slaughter operations late last week, and second-shift workers are already off the job. Paychecks will continue until mid-March, but community leaders will have a rough idea before then of how many plant workers will leave town.
Already, local officials know that roughly 400 Somalis, mostly single men, brought in by Tyson in the last two or three years will leave for jobs at other Tyson plants.
The real question is what happens to the other 1,100 families. That's a significant question in a town of 27,000 people.
On Friday, 21 government and nonprofit groups held a summit. City Manager Matt Zimmerman emerged elated: The community was pulling together, sharing resources and coming up with solutions.
Among them is a job/social services fair on Feb. 16. Fifty employers will be there, as will state and federal workers to help with benefits, bankers to advise on home loans and volunteer tax preparers. A food and fund drive is being organized.
"It's a dip... not a depression," Zimmerman said Friday. "But we have to make sure people don't turn it into that by panicking."
Leaving after 10 years
Maricela Ocampo has worked for Tyson for the past 10 years and was living the American Dream.
She, her husband and three children had scraped by for years in order to save money and build up their credit rating for a nicer house. In August, they bought a large ranch-style house on Emporia's south side. The kids were happy in school.
Now, the family will have to move so she can find work. The layoff has put their dreams in jeopardy.
The house is on the market, and she said they probably will move to the Kansas City area. The stress has made her sick, she said.
"I'm sad mostly," she said. "We got used to it in Emporia.
"We will have to divide the family. My parents and all my friends will be staying here, and I'm not."
5 percent -- or 15 percent
Larry Ek and Maurice Schmidt of Ek Real Estate, the city's largest agency, have sold houses in Emporia for 30 years.
They're veterans of the economic twists and turns of this town. They recall fondly the 4,000 construction workers who came to town in the late 1970s and early 1980s to build the Wolf Creek nuclear plant.
And they remember what happened when they left -- home prices fell 15 percent.
They were calm last week as they thought about the future. They had a busy week talking to people who were putting their homes on the market. Emporia, the agents said, still will be there tomorrow, although it may be a little different.
The number of people leaving town means home prices will fall again. Just how far they fall is an indicator of the town's economic distress.
"The only question is will it be down 5, 10 or 15 percent," Schmidt said.
Ready to hire
Beneath the larger bad news story, there are smaller good news stories.
Dan Smoots, co-owner of Fanestil Foods with his wife, Jan, has built the specialty meat processing plant into a $10 million operation with 70 workers.
They placed an ad for five more workers before they heard about the layoffs. The ad ran a day after the layoffs were announced.
"We didn't know this tsunami was coming," Smoots said.
By midweek, they had about 75 applications, with 20 or 30 more a day coming in.
Smoots worked at the Emporia plant for 17 years. He feels their pain, but he's an entrepreneur now and also sees an opportunity.
He will have no trouble getting those five workers now. And if he decides to pursue a contract to debone and grind chicken, he will add 10 or 15 more with no trouble. Having hundreds of people with meat cutting experience available is a tremendous opportunity.
"How often can you pick up 10 to 15 people with Wizard knife skills?" he said. "All they have to do is trade beef for chicken."
Economic ups, downs
Kent Heermann's job as president of the regional economic development council just got harder.
As the city's main economic development person, the community is looking to him to replace those jobs. Although a couple of smaller plants are set to open in the near future, they won't come close to immediately replacing those jobs.
But a look at other cities that had large beef plants close recently is surprisingly comforting.
Norfolk, Neb., lost 1,300 jobs when Tyson closed a slaughter plant there in 2006. Unemployment grew from 3.7 percent to 4.0 percent but started to decline within about four months as those workers either left or were absorbed into the economy.
The Tyson workers are a valuable, but perishable, resource from an economic development perspective, he said. They're attractive to other industries looking to relocate to Emporia.
But the workers need to find work. Already, Hutchinson, Great Bend, Arkansas City and Fremont, Neb., are asking to be at the February job fair.
"There is a great opportunity out there for the workers," Heermann said. "But we'd like to keep as many as possible in Emporia."
Reach Dan Voorhis at 316-268-6577 or dvoorhis@wichitaeagle.com.
The Wichita Eagle
Maricela Ocampo has suffered from depression and blood pressure issues after learning she and 1,500 other beef processing employees were being laid off from Tyson in Emporia. She and her family have placed their Emporia home on the market.
Mike Hutmacher/The Wichita Eagle
Maricela Ocampo has suffered from depression and blood pressure issues after learning she and 1,500 other beef processing employees were being laid off from Tyson in Emporia. She and her family have placed their Emporia home on the market.
Maricela Ocampo has suffered from depression and blood pressure issues after learning she and 1,500 other beef processing employees were being laid off from Tyson in Emporia. She and her family have placed their Emporia home on the market. Tyson beef processing plant in Emporia. Tyson beef processing plant in Emporia. Employees leave the Tyson beef processing plant in Emporia after their shift. A Tyson beef processing plant worker prods a steer onto the killing floor chute in Emporia.
* Tyson layoffs surprise few in industry
* Garden City ready for ex-Tyson workers
EMPORIA PREPARES FOR LOST TYSON JOBS
The massive Tyson Foods plant sits on the west edge of Emporia like an anchor keeping the town from blowing away. The cattle slaughtering and processing plant has for decades been the city's largest employer. It provides more than 10 percent of the jobs in a two-county area, along with the characteristic stockyard smell.
That's why when Tyson announced Jan. 25 that it was laying off 1,500 of its 2,400 workers, the town was gripped by shock, then anger and panic. By midweek that had settled into a deep anxiety.
The best estimate is that the layoff will take $65 million to $75 million out of the $900 million Emporia-area economy.
And lurking in the background is the fate of the 700-employee Dolly Madison Cakes plant. The
owner, Interstate Bakeries, is close to presenting a plan to emerge from bankruptcy, but what that means for the plant is unclear.
The one bright spot is that the community has an unemployment rate of just 4 percent and has jobs going unfilled because of the tight labor market. But the layoff could push that to 7 to 8 percent, officials said Friday.
Bracing for the impact
The community is planning furiously as it waits a few weeks to get a clearer read on the impact of the Tyson layoffs.
The plant stopped slaughter operations late last week, and second-shift workers are already off the job. Paychecks will continue until mid-March, but community leaders will have a rough idea before then of how many plant workers will leave town.
Already, local officials know that roughly 400 Somalis, mostly single men, brought in by Tyson in the last two or three years will leave for jobs at other Tyson plants.
The real question is what happens to the other 1,100 families. That's a significant question in a town of 27,000 people.
On Friday, 21 government and nonprofit groups held a summit. City Manager Matt Zimmerman emerged elated: The community was pulling together, sharing resources and coming up with solutions.
Among them is a job/social services fair on Feb. 16. Fifty employers will be there, as will state and federal workers to help with benefits, bankers to advise on home loans and volunteer tax preparers. A food and fund drive is being organized.
"It's a dip... not a depression," Zimmerman said Friday. "But we have to make sure people don't turn it into that by panicking."
Leaving after 10 years
Maricela Ocampo has worked for Tyson for the past 10 years and was living the American Dream.
She, her husband and three children had scraped by for years in order to save money and build up their credit rating for a nicer house. In August, they bought a large ranch-style house on Emporia's south side. The kids were happy in school.
Now, the family will have to move so she can find work. The layoff has put their dreams in jeopardy.
The house is on the market, and she said they probably will move to the Kansas City area. The stress has made her sick, she said.
"I'm sad mostly," she said. "We got used to it in Emporia.
"We will have to divide the family. My parents and all my friends will be staying here, and I'm not."
5 percent -- or 15 percent
Larry Ek and Maurice Schmidt of Ek Real Estate, the city's largest agency, have sold houses in Emporia for 30 years.
They're veterans of the economic twists and turns of this town. They recall fondly the 4,000 construction workers who came to town in the late 1970s and early 1980s to build the Wolf Creek nuclear plant.
And they remember what happened when they left -- home prices fell 15 percent.
They were calm last week as they thought about the future. They had a busy week talking to people who were putting their homes on the market. Emporia, the agents said, still will be there tomorrow, although it may be a little different.
The number of people leaving town means home prices will fall again. Just how far they fall is an indicator of the town's economic distress.
"The only question is will it be down 5, 10 or 15 percent," Schmidt said.
Ready to hire
Beneath the larger bad news story, there are smaller good news stories.
Dan Smoots, co-owner of Fanestil Foods with his wife, Jan, has built the specialty meat processing plant into a $10 million operation with 70 workers.
They placed an ad for five more workers before they heard about the layoffs. The ad ran a day after the layoffs were announced.
"We didn't know this tsunami was coming," Smoots said.
By midweek, they had about 75 applications, with 20 or 30 more a day coming in.
Smoots worked at the Emporia plant for 17 years. He feels their pain, but he's an entrepreneur now and also sees an opportunity.
He will have no trouble getting those five workers now. And if he decides to pursue a contract to debone and grind chicken, he will add 10 or 15 more with no trouble. Having hundreds of people with meat cutting experience available is a tremendous opportunity.
"How often can you pick up 10 to 15 people with Wizard knife skills?" he said. "All they have to do is trade beef for chicken."
Economic ups, downs
Kent Heermann's job as president of the regional economic development council just got harder.
As the city's main economic development person, the community is looking to him to replace those jobs. Although a couple of smaller plants are set to open in the near future, they won't come close to immediately replacing those jobs.
But a look at other cities that had large beef plants close recently is surprisingly comforting.
Norfolk, Neb., lost 1,300 jobs when Tyson closed a slaughter plant there in 2006. Unemployment grew from 3.7 percent to 4.0 percent but started to decline within about four months as those workers either left or were absorbed into the economy.
The Tyson workers are a valuable, but perishable, resource from an economic development perspective, he said. They're attractive to other industries looking to relocate to Emporia.
But the workers need to find work. Already, Hutchinson, Great Bend, Arkansas City and Fremont, Neb., are asking to be at the February job fair.
"There is a great opportunity out there for the workers," Heermann said. "But we'd like to keep as many as possible in Emporia."
Reach Dan Voorhis at 316-268-6577 or dvoorhis@wichitaeagle.com.
Labels: Emporia, Kansas, Kansas City, layoffs, Tyson
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