Issue Insights: Closure of the Tyson Foods Plant in Lexington, NE (Part 1)

December 14, 2025

Author’s Note: Most people may not be aware of the news that has rocked a small community in my home state of Nebraska. Tyson Foods recently announced that it was closing a meat processing plant in Lexington, putting 3,200 people out of work with little meaningful notice.

The significance of this action cannot be ignored as Lexington is home to slightly more than 10,348 people (per 2020 census). This action is the equivalent of an economic nuclear bomb dropped in the middle of this community and all of the adjacent communities/counties.

Jason Douglas, one of the business leaders of the Lexington business community, wrote this open letter to Tyson Foods. I encourage everyone to read it. Read too Senate Candidate Dan Osborn’s cutting, vocal critique of Tyson's actions. Educate yourself on Osborn’s calls for enforcement of the Packers and Stockyards Act of 1921. (See footnote.)

Methinks it’s time that we Americans/voters/consumers draw a bright, red line and say “Enough!” Methinks our future depends on doing so. [P.S. This is the first in a series of posts on this subject.]

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An Open Letter to Tyson Foods

To CEO Donnie King, Board Chairman John H. Tyson, and the Tyson Foods Board of Directors:

My name is Jason Douglas, and I serve as CEO of Lexington Regional Health Center, a Nebraska Hospital District, here in Lexington, Nebraska. I came to this community in March of this year as a healthcare administrator who passionately believes in the mission of serving rural communities. I’m writing to you as someone who has spent the past two weeks watching families in our community try to find their footing after your November 21st announcement.

You gave them a Friday afternoon, right before Thanksgiving. It’ll be memorable, as November 21st just happened to be my birthday. I’d planned to spend it settling further into this community I’d grown to love and appreciate in my short time here. Instead, I spent it fielding calls and beginning to understand the scope of what your decision would mean for the people I came here to serve.

What matters is that 3,200 people learned that same day their jobs would be gone by January 20th—then went home to prepare a holiday meal with their families. To sit across the table from their children and try to find something to be thankful for. To lie awake that night doing math in their heads—how many paychecks left, how long until insurance runs out, whether they can make rent in February.

That was your timing. That was your choice.

I’ve read your 10K and other SEC filings. I know that CEO King received $22.8 million in total compensation last year—a 73% increase from the year before. I know that Chairman Tyson received $18.4 million, including nearly $3 million for personal use of the company jet. I know about the dual-class share structure that keeps control in family hands. I know about the 525-to-1 pay ratio between your CEO and your median worker. Heck, even when enjoying a Saturday afternoon football game, I had to look at your corporate sponsorship behind the Arkansas coach speaking to the media—first thought, how much did that one corporate sponsorship cost compared to a week, month, etc., for extending some time for families to have a bit more time to better understand their options.

And I know that Tyson Foods posted $474 million in net income this past fiscal year. Not revenue—profit. Nearly half a billion dollars that landed on your bottom line. So when you talk about closing this plant out of necessity, what you’re really saying is that you chose shareholder returns and executive compensation over the community that helped make those profits possible for 35 years.

And while Lexington families were sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner, wondering how they’d survive, your board members were likely enjoying their own holiday plans (likely having just arrived somewhere via private jet)—plans made considerably more comfortable by the labor of the very people you just discarded.

Your filings also reveal other things about how your company handles accountability at the leadership level versus the shop floor. I’d encourage anyone reading this to look into recent news coverage of your board’s composition and the standards applied to its members, family members, son, etc.—ok, let’s be more direct, John R., for example. The contrast with how a line worker would be treated for similar conduct is... instructive.

But I’m not writing primarily about your compensation or your governance. I’m writing about the people I’ve been working with these past few months—and even more closely these past couple of weeks.

Let me tell you who works—who worked—at your Lexington plant.

Many are immigrants who came to this country legally, following every rule, because they believed in what America promised: opportunity through hard work. They left behind everything familiar—family, language, culture—because they believed that if they showed up and gave their best, they could build something here. They could give their children a better life. They could participate in something called the American Dream.

They didn’t come here for handouts. They came for the chance to work. And work they did—in conditions most Americans couldn’t handle, for wages that required careful budgeting, building lives one paycheck at a time.

Lexington welcomed them. Our community didn’t just tolerate diversity—we celebrated it. This community built something together. The schools adapted. Businesses evolved. Our neighborhoods became richer for the different perspectives, traditions, and cultures that your workforce brought with them. It became a community that proves what America can be when people are given a chance to contribute.

Your plant was at the center of that. For 35 years, since IBP first opened those doors in 1990, this community organized itself around the economic anchor you provided. People bought homes here. They enrolled their kids in our schools. They joined our churches, coached our little league teams, and volunteered at community activities (yes, we have the pictures from our own organization to demonstrate that). They built lives premised on the belief that the work would continue.

I’ve only been here since March, but even in that short time, I’ve come to understand what this community built—and what your decision is trying to tear apart.

Now I’m watching those lives come apart.

I’m watching families try to navigate unemployment systems that weren’t designed for mass layoffs of this scale (the State had to deploy a rapid response team to help folks navigate the options they faced). I’m watching parents try to figure out health insurance—how to maintain coverage through COBRA, the Health Exchange/Marketplace, likely coverage they can’t afford (due to a stripping of the previous subsidies or the extreme price of ongoing COBRA coverage) - or how to apply for Medicaid in a system that will soon require several additional steps to maintain it (thanks to HR1). I’m watching people wrestle with impossible choices: Do we stay in the community we’ve built, hoping something else comes along? Do we uproot our children from the only schools they’ve known and chase your “relocation benefits” to a plant hundreds of miles away—how would that turn out, given this decision? Do we leave America altogether and return to countries that are no longer home?

I’m watching families try to explain to their children why Christmas will be different this year. Why mom or dad won’t be going to work anymore. Why they might have to move. Why the future that seemed stable three weeks ago is now uncertain.

As a hospital administrator, I’m also watching what this means for healthcare access in our community. When thousands of people lose employer-sponsored insurance simultaneously, the ripple effects hit our emergency department, our clinics, and our beds. The decisions you make in a boardroom in Arkansas have consequences that cascade through every aspect of life here.

And I’m watching what this does to a community’s sense of itself—the dawning realization that 35 years of loyalty, of showing up, of giving everything to your production line, wasn’t enough to earn even the courtesy of decent timing.

You came to Lexington in 1985, when we’d lost Sperry-New Holland and 940 jobs. We were, as Governor Orr said at the time, “dying by inches.” IBP offered a lifeline, and we took it—along with the tax incentives Nebraska created to make the deal attractive to you.

For 35 years, this community held up its end of the bargain. We provided the workers. We provided the infrastructure. We absorbed the environmental and social costs that come with large-scale meatpacking. We asked our residents to work jobs that, by any measure, are among the most physically demanding and dangerous in American industry. We built our schools, housing, and healthcare system around the assumption that you would be here.

And when the corporate math changed—when beef margins tightened and when perhaps certain tax advantages ran their course—you made a spreadsheet decision in Springdale, Arkansas, and 3,200 families in Lexington, Nebraska, became nothing more than a line item.

You took what you needed from these people and this community. Our people gave everything—their time, their hard work, their commitment, their willingness to step up whenever Tyson needed them. And with a swift board action, you turned your back on 35 years of partnership—on the culture, the diversity, the community that grew up around your plant. You can close a facility. You can’t undo what this community has built and become.

So here is what I’m asking:

Do better.

Not because it will help your stock price. Not because it will play well in the press. But because you owe it to the people who made your company’s profits possible.

Don’t strip this plant bare as you did in Norfolk in 2006, leaving a facility that sits empty to this day. Preserve it for potential future use—by you or by someone else. Give this community a chance to rebuild around a functioning asset rather than a hollowed-out shell.

Extend meaningful transition support—not the minimum required by the WARN Act, but support that reflects 35 years of service. Fund job training. Provide extended healthcare coverage. Help the workers who made you profitable land on their feet.

And in the future, when you make decisions that affect communities like ours, remember that the numbers on your spreadsheet represent human lives. Families. Children. Dreams that people carried across oceans because they believed in what America promised.

You had a choice about how to do this. You chose the Friday before Thanksgiving. You decided to give people less than 60 days. You chose shareholder value over human dignity.

You can still choose differently going forward.

And to any company or organization reading this:

If you have real values—not the kind that live on a website, but the kind that guide actual decisions—Lexington welcomes you. If you’re looking for a workforce that shows up, works hard, and believes in what America is supposed to be, we have thousands of people ready to prove it. They came here chasing a dream. That dream didn’t die on November 21st. It’s still here, waiting for a partner worthy of it.

And if you’re looking for infrastructure that works, we have that too. Interstate 80—the main east-west artery across America—runs right through Lexington. We have rail access via Union Pacific. Highway 30 provides additional ground transportation options. We have the logistics backbone that makes moving goods efficient and cost-effective. The same infrastructure advantages that brought Tyson here in 1985 are still here, refined by 35 years of supporting large-scale operations. We’re not asking you to build from scratch—we’re offering you a community that knows how to support industrial success.

Come see what this community has built. Come meet the people Tyson walked away from. We think you’ll find something worth investing in.

Lexington will survive this. Our community is resilient. The families you’ve displaced will find a way forward—because that’s what people do when they have no other choice. We will help each other. We will adapt. We will rebuild.

But we will also remember. We will remember how this was done. We will remember the timing, the calculations, and the priorities your decisions revealed.

And we will tell this story—not out of bitterness, but because other communities deserve to know what it means to build their futures around a corporation that sees them as a line item to be optimized.

This holiday season, as you enjoy the comforts your positions afford (jets and all), I hope you’ll spare a thought for Lexington. For the families gathered around tables with uncertain futures. For the workers who gave you everything and received a Friday afternoon announcement in return.

They deserved better from you.

We all did.

Respectfully,

Jason Douglas

Lexington Regional Health Center

Lexington, Nebraska

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Salinas, Juan, “Dan Osborn Says Tyson Manipulated Beef Market with Nebraska Plant Closure,” Nebraska Examiner (December 10, 2-25), https://nebraskaexaminer.com/2025/12/10/dan-osborn-calls-out-tyson-for-market-manipulation-with-nebraska-beef-plant-closure.