\u201cAs Perry [Iowa] residents struggle to cope with mass layoffs, Tyson Foods has its eyes on a different class of workers. The company is now offering new jobs to asylum seekers in other states \u2026. They\u2019re firing Americans and offering perks to illegals. This was the Democrat plan all along.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2014 Fox News prime-time host Jesse Watters, March 14<\/p>\n
Watters recently put Tyson Foods, the nation\u2019s largest meatpacker, in the spotlight. With his platform on Fox News, he generated a firestorm on the right by claiming that Tyson was firing workers in Perry, Iowa, \u201cone of the great American suburbs,\u201d and hiring undocumented immigrants elsewhere in the country.<\/p>\n
His report, with a news chyron declaring \u201cPerry, Iowa is an all-American town,\u201d was accompanied by clips from a 1978 video, found on YouTube, that pitched Perry as a good place for business investment. Interviews with three people \u2014 all speaking in unaccented English \u2014 were shown. \u201cIt\u2019s a relatively small town with strong values and a very close-knit community,\u201d one person said.<\/p>\n
Then Watters gilded the lily by bringing on Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) and saying: \u201cI didn\u2019t think it was legal, Senator, to ax American workers and hire en masse illegal aliens.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vance replied: \u201cWell, it shouldn\u2019t be, Jesse, and we\u2019re certainly going to look into whether we can change that, assuming Tyson is operating legally, which we don\u2019t even know if they are.\u201d<\/p>\n
The segment was picked up by conservative publications like the New York Post and the Daily Mail. America First Legal, a litigious group run by former Donald Trump aide Stephen Miller, warned \u201cit is illegal under federal law to discriminate against American citizens based on their citizenship in favor of noncitizens of any kind when it comes to employment.\u201d An investment fund that claims it invests only in companies with conservative values earned headlines by announcing it had divested its Tyson stock.<\/p>\n
This Sturm und Drang is severely misplaced, based on some basic misunderstandings \u2014 or deliberate misinformation. It\u2019s a textbook example of how events taken out of context can be weaponized for political purposes.<\/p>\n
On March 11, the Wall Street Journal reported that Tyson, which is based in Arkansas, had decided to permanently close its 1,200-person pork processing plant in Perry. The company said it was seeking greater efficiency; the plant, 61 years old, was smaller than other pork plants in the state and, according to the Des Moines Register, did not allow for a second shift of work. Demand for U.S. pork from China caused a spike in pork production some years ago, but exports to the country are now down, leading to oversupply. Still, the Perry plant\u2019s closing will not reduce the amount of pork produced by Tyson.<\/p>\n
That same March day, Bloomberg News published an article titled: \u201cTyson Is Hiring New York Immigrants for Jobs No One Else Wants.\u201d<\/p>\n
The article reported that Tyson was partnering with a nonprofit organization, Tent, to hire refugees (in the country legally) who recently arrived in the New York area. Garrett Dolan, Tyson associate director of human resources, was quoted as saying that 42,000 immigrants were part of the company\u2019s 120,000-strong workforce. \u201cWe would like to employ another 42,000 if we could find them,\u201d Dolan added. He said that not many people wanted to take unpleasant jobs like washing meat and inspecting for bones, whereas immigrant workers were \u201cvery, very loyal.\u201d The report noted that Tyson recently had hired 17 asylum seekers from Venezuela, Mexico and Colombia for jobs at a plant in Tennessee.<\/p>\n
The article also quoted Dolan as saying that Tyson plans to hire about 52,000 people in 2024 in a wage class that paid $16.50 an hour, plus benefits.<\/p>\n
A Tyson spokesperson said Dolan misspoke when he used the 52,000 figure. \u201cThe company has between 5 to 8 percent of roles open, all of which are available to anyone who is qualified and legally authorized to work in the United States,\u201d the spokesperson said in a statement. That works out to about 6,000 to 9,600 people.<\/p>\n
Bloomberg\u2019s article was picked up by Scripps News on March 13, which headlined its article: \u201cTyson Foods wants to hire 52,000 asylum seekers for factory jobs.\u201d That article was retracted on March 16 because of \u201cserious factual inaccuracies,\u201d a statement said. The reporter for the story did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
The Bloomberg story has not been retracted or updated. A spokesperson said the story speaks for itself.<\/p>\n
On March 14, Watters took these discrete events and conjured a narrative suggesting that U.S. citizens were being fired in Iowa in exchange for illegal immigrants being hired in New York. But that\u2019s false.<\/p>\n
Tyson Foods said the number of its immigrant workers fluctuated, but 42,000 out of 120,000 was essentially accurate now. The company has many brands, not all of which involve meat processing. The company declined to say what percentage of the Perry workers were immigrants, but as a matter of logic, it should be substantial.<\/p>\n
Tyson, on its website, says more than 11 languages may be spoken at a single plant. Jobs for the Future, a nonprofit, says 60 percent of Tyson front-line workers in processing plants are \u201cimmigrants and refugees representing more than 60 countries.\u201d<\/p>\n
Perry, which is about 40 miles northwest of Des Moines, is no longer the White enclave that the 1970s video clips suggested. The Census Bureau reports that Perry\u2019s Latino population has increased from 47 people in 1990 to 2,498 in 2022. That\u2019s more than 31 percent of the 8,008 people who live in the town. Nearly 19 percent of Perry\u2019s residents were born outside the United States, the bureau says.<\/p>\n
Watters didn\u2019t mention that Tyson\u2019s announcement about the Perry plant added that workers were encouraged to apply for open jobs elsewhere in the company. (Tyson has four other processing plants in Iowa.) He briefly flashed Tyson\u2019s statement that immigrants who work for the company are required to be \u201clegally authorized to work in the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n
But he didn\u2019t quote that part on air. Instead, he said only: \u201cWe reached out to Tyson for comment, and they said they have a very diverse set of employees and they\u2019re proud of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not really news that Tyson hires many immigrant workers. The company has long made that clear and made it a point of pride. It\u2019s also not news that meat processors are seeking greater efficiency in an era of oversupply. What Watters did was take two unrelated events and combine them in a way to generate outrage on the right.<\/p>\n
Asked for comment, Fox News issued this statement: \u201cOn the same day that Tyson announced plans to close their Perry, Iowa plant, Bloomberg reported a story about how the company was working to recruit asylum seekers to work in their plants in New York and Tennessee. Jesse Watters Primetime reached out to Tyson for comment ahead of covering the dueling stories, which was aired in full on screen and referenced in the segment.\u201d<\/p>\n
On March 15, an X account, @EndWokeness, with 2.4 million followers, announced a boycott of Tyson Foods, displaying the company\u2019s many brands. \u201cTyson is closing its facility in Perry, Iowa and laying off its 1,200 workers,\u201d the post said. \u201cInstead, they plan to hire thousands of new illegals in states like New York.\u201d<\/p>\n
The next day, Fox Business Network picked up the story, highlighting the 52,000 figure. \u201cTyson laying off 1,200 workers after closing its pork factory in Perry, Iowa, only later to announce 52,000 jobs for migrants,\u201d said co-host Sean P. Duffy, a former GOP member of Congress from Wisconsin. \u201cMisplaced Hiring Priorities,\u201d declared the segment\u2019s headline.<\/p>\n
That same day, the American Conservative Values ETF, a fund that invests in companies it says do not promote liberal values, announced it had dumped its holdings of Tyson Foods. That prompted a new round of headlines, though fund manager Bill Flaig acknowledged to The Fact Checker that the holdings were minuscule \u2014 roughly $36,000 (649 shares) out of $79 million in assets.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur position was small and in isolation was of no economic impact on TSN, but politically conservative investors are becoming aware that they can fight the woke liberal takeover of America with their investments,\u201d Flaig said.<\/p>\n
Yet, since Watters\u2019s segment aired, Tyson stock has increased in value \u2014 suggesting that the controversy may not have spread far beyond a red corner of America.<\/p>\n
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\u201cAs Perry [Iowa] residents struggle to cope with mass layoffs, Tyson Foods has its eyes on a different class of workers. The company is now offering new jobs to asylum seekers in other states \u2026. They\u2019re firing Americans and offering perks to illegals. This was the Democrat plan all along.\u201d \u2014 Fox News prime-time host […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":2358,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2357\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}