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How to Stop Tyson Foods from Destroying 3,200 Jobs in a Nebraska Town of 10,000
Dan Osborn, the independent US Senate candidate in Nebraska, needs a plan. And it's a plan that could and should be embraced in states and communities nationwide.
Apr 15, 2026
Here are some things to know about large corporations:
- Corporations in America are free to shut down facilities, whether profitable or unprofitable, with devastating effects on workers, their families, and their communities.
- Corporations are also free to use their cash to repurchase their own stock shares, driving up their price without increasing the company’s value—a pure and simple case of stock manipulation that enriches top corporate executives and Wall Street investors.
- And corporations in the US enjoy the benefits that come from receiving taxpayer-funded government contracts, while retaining the right to destroy the jobs of taxpayers, if they see fit.
Dan Osborn, the Nebraska independent senatorial candidate, knows all this. It’s a good part of the reason he’s running for office, and he needs a plan. He knows this is a travesty, a disaster, a case of the rich and powerful trashing working people. As he puts it, “This isn’t left and right anymore, this is big versus little,” and he wants to do all he can to stop Tyson from killing 3,200 jobs in Lexington, Nebraska.
Osborn has called for the enforcement of the 1921 federal Packers and Stockyards Act, which was designed to promote competitiveness in the livestock, meat, and poultry industries and prohibit deception and fraud. He claims Tyson broke the law by closing its Lexington, Nebraska, plant instead of selling the facility to a competitor. The closure was “destroying 5 percent of America’s beef processing capacity,” Osborn argued, which will drive up prices instead of maintaining a competitive market.
In just the last quarter of 2025, Tyson conducted more than $200 million in stock repurchases which did nothing to improve production and nothing at all to protect the workers.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer joined the fight by demanding that Agricultural Secretary Brooke Rollings use the authority she has under the Act to block the Lexington closure. But, on January 21, 2026, the plant shut down anyway. In fact, no plant closing has ever been stopped by this act.
If the law is not enough to protect these devastated workers and communities, where can Osborn find leverage to help them?
It is really hard to stop a plant closing in the United States of America. Of the millions of mass layoffs over the past three decades, I’m having trouble finding any that have been reversed (although my friends at the Teamsters Union say they have been successful on occasion.) There have been at least a handful of worker buyouts of facilities scheduled for shutdowns that kept them open for a time, but all I know about soon went under.
There is one point of leverage, however, that has yet to be used—federal contracts.
Large corporations love to dine at the federal trough, gobbling up as much taxpayer money as they can through federal grants and contracts. Tyson is no exception. It’s got its hands all over our tax dollars. In 2025, it received 170 federal awards for a total of $234 million. It also received, from 2018 to 2020, $727 million from the Pentagon to supply beef to the military. And those contracts have been renewed through today.
Mass layoffs are a heartless tool that ignores how critical stable employment is to families and communities.
What if Osborn promised that as senator, he would fight for a new federal regulation like this:
All corporations of 500 or more employees that receive taxpayer-funded federal contracts shall not be permitted to conduct compulsory layoffs of taxpayers. All layoffs must be voluntary based on financial incentives.
Wouldn’t that be fair and just? After all, voluntary financial incentives to leave a job are commonplace for executives. And it’s not just severance. The idea is that no one should be forced to leave. The financial incentive would need to be high enough to attract voluntary departures.
Is this proposal too radical for Nebraska?
No doubt, corporations and their political handmaidens would vigorously attack the proposal. Isn’t the key to a free society the right of business owners, large and small, to manage their own enterprises as they see fit? When the government intervenes to control hiring and firing, isn’t it stepping towards socialism, which history has shown is both a failure economically and a path towards totalitarianism? Wouldn’t such a proposal harm jobs, our economy, and democracy?
Osborn’s response could be simple: Corporations would be totally free to hire and fire at will—but not if they are taking taxpayer money. If they want our money, then they can’t force us out against our will. No compulsory layoffs!
We tested this idea and the corporate attacks in our survey of 3,000 Midwestern voters across Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. About half of those voters supported the idea, with very low percentages opposed, even after being introduced to corporate attacks against the policy.
If they want our money, then they can’t force us out against our will. No compulsory layoffs!
Where would the money come from?
That’s where stock buybacks come in. In just the last quarter of 2025, Tyson conducted more than $200 million in stock repurchases which did nothing to improve production and nothing at all to protect the workers. They chose to pad the bonuses of Tyson executives and the portfolios of large Wall Street shareholders. It might have made instead a nice start on a worker buyout fund.
The proposal may sound radical, but nothing about this is pie in the sky. The Siemens Corporation in Germany agreed to a no-compulsory layoff proposal with its union, IG Metall, after it announced the layoff of 3,000 workers. As the result of negotiated settlement with the union, the workers could take voluntary financial buyout packages. But, none of the workers were forced to leave. And instead of the scheduled shutdown of five facilities, the company agreed to put in new products to keep the plants open.
Large corporations like Siemens and Tyson have enormous flexibility. They can rearrange production in countless ways. Unless pressured by the workers through their labor unions, they serve corporate needs first and subordinate those of workers. Mass layoffs are a heartless tool that ignores how critical stable employment is to families and communities. These companies have the financial power to fulfill the needs and interests of their employees, but they choose not to. But for Tyson, and so many companies today, all that matters is shoveling as much money as possible into the pockets of their wealthy executives and Wall Street investors. The workers be damned!
At this point, the Tyson workers and Dan Osborn know that the plant is not going to be reopened. But Osborn’s campaign could commemorate those workers by becoming the first politician in the nation to offer a realistic and potentially popular solution to this recurring nightmare:
No Compulsory Layoffs at Corporations That Receive Taxpayer Money!
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These Proposals Would Make Life Better for Millions of People—And Most Americans Support Them
"That the US Congress is not debating or introducing bills to address the issues presented here represents a breakdown of democracy," said an economic justice think tank.
Apr 13, 2026
A new report by an economic think tank takes aim at the broadly accepted idea that Americans are divided on the major issues affecting millions of people every day—the question of how to ensure everyone can get the healthcare they need without going bankrupt, how the government can ensure working people make enough money to live, and whether the US should take more aggressive climate action.
As it turns out, the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) suggested Monday, there's far more agreement on those and more issues across the political spectrum than the corporate media and establishment politicians from both sides of the aisle would have the public believe.
Lawmakers who push for good, fair-paying jobs for all workers; raising the chronically stagnant federal minimum wage; guaranteeing healthcare for all Americans; clean energy investments; and ending the influence of corporations and billionaires on US elections would not be advocating for policies that are just popular on the left, the report says, but would actually be promoting a "Majority Agenda."
"It may feel like Americans agree on nothing right now, but recent polling tells a different story," said CEPR on social media. "From raising the minimum wage and strengthening Social Security to affordable housing and healthcare reform, these progressive policies are broadly popular despite the political establishment continuing to ignore them."
The group pointed to one 2024 poll by the American Communities Project that showed more than 60% of Americans agreed that the economy "is rigged to advantage the rich and the powerful," while 62% disagreed with the idea of cutting social programs to lower taxes.
Another 2024 poll by The Associated Press found that 91% of Americans supported equal protection under the law and 88% supported the right to privacy, while a 2020 poll by the Carr Center for Human Rights at Harvard Kennedy School revealed that 89% of Americans expressed strong support for affordable healthcare, 85% felt people have the right to a job, and 93% thought the right to clean air and water is essential.
Analyzing those surveys and other data, CEPR advised policymakers to consider the Majority Agenda as a "roadmap" to passing policies that large majorities of Americans view as major priorities to improve their quality of life.
The report is divided into three sections: Good Jobs, Strong Infrastructure, and Fair Play.
To push for fair, well-paying employment, said CEPR, lawmakers should support policies including:
- Increasing unionization‚ supported by 68% of Americans in one recent poll, through the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, cracking down on retaliation against union members, and repealing or reforming the Taft-Hartley Act;
- Raising the $7.25 federal minimum wage, supported by 86% of Americans; and
- Setting a floor for paid time off from work by strengthening the Family and Medical Leave Act.
The section on strengthening US "infrastructure" looks beyond the traditional definition of the term regarding physical infrastructure projects, pushing for stronger policies that can help working people thrive by ensuring their healthcare, housing, and other basic needs are met.
A stronger infrastructure, said CEPR, would include:
- Guaranteed healthcare for everyone in the US through the passage of the Medicare for All Act, which has been introduced in the US House and Senate numerous times, and a corporate practice of medicine law to stop the corporatization of healthcare;
- A reversal of the trend of federal housing policy directing "too much funding to the wealthy and too little for everyone else," by ending federal restrictions on the creation of new federal public housing instead of investing in mortgage interest deductions for wealthy homeowners and the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, whose benefits are greater for wealthy investors than for low-income renters; and
- An investment in clean energy by reinstating Biden-era regulations and strengthening the Clean Air Act and other environmental protection laws in order to meet the demands of 59% of Americans who view the climate crisis as "very or extremely dangerous," according to a 2021 poll by the University of Chicago.
CEPR pointed to three areas in which lawmakers could increase "fair play" for Americans:
- Strengthening and supporting Social Security, which Republicans frequently attack as rife with fraud and on the verge of going broke, by diverting some among of general revenue to the program and increasing monthly benefits modestly;
- Passing a constitutional amendment to allow the government to regulate campaign fundraising and spending both by campaigns and outside individuals and artificial entities; and
- Raising taxes on large businesses and the wealthy, as large majorities of Americans believe government should, and restoring funding to the Internal Revenue Service to ensure proper collection of taxes.
"That the US Congress is not debating or introducing bills to address the issues presented here represents a breakdown of democracy, one that comes at a considerable cost to the betterment of life for large swaths of Americans. At the same time, the access to and influence over our democratic processes by the monied class has upended our system of government, and all too often the tyranny of the wealthy minority has reigned," reads the CEPR report.
"We hope this report stands as a reminder that even in a fraught political moment," said CEPR, "there is a range of straightforward, broadly popular policy choices that could improve the lives of millions of people."
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Sanders Leads Launch of 'Worker Power' Movement to Fight 'Status Quo Economics'
“Unless we fundamentally transform our economic and political systems, the worst is yet to come,” Sen. Bernie Sanders warned.
Apr 13, 2026
As Republican policies, union-busting corporations, and the imminent threat of artificial intelligence put unprecedented pressure on the US workforce, Sen. Bernie Sanders headlined Sunday's launch of a movement "to strengthen the labor movement and expand worker power across the country."
Sanders (I-Vt.) spoke at the “Union Now: Building the Labor Movement” rally at Terminal 5 in Hell's Kitchen in Midtown Manhattan alongside New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Association of Flight Attendants-CWA international president Sara Nelson, and other labor and social movement leaders.
“Unless we fundamentally transform our economic and political systems, the worst is yet to come,” Sanders warned. “If the middle class of this country is going to survive, we must understand that status quo politics and status quo economics is no longer good enough."
LIVE Bernie Sanders Zohran Mamdani UNION NOW Rally in NYC https://t.co/uC6atxCK7N
— Status Coup News (@StatusCoup) April 12, 2026
“It’s absolutely important that all of us here and every American understand that in the ruling class of this country today, there is an extraordinary level of arrogance and cruelty,” the senator said.
"The truth is that the 1% the people on top, people running this country have never, ever had it so good,” Sanders told the crowd. “But the sad reality is that for these people, all that they have is not good enough. They want more and more and more, and they don’t care who they step on to get what they want."
“These guys are extremely, extremely greedy people, and they could care less in terms of what happens to our children, what happens to our parents and our grandparents, and what happens to our environment today," the senator argued.
“One of the goals of the oligarchs and the media that they own is to make ordinary people feel that there is nothing that they can do to shape the future,” he added. “And what we are here today to say to [Elon] Musk and his friends: Go to hell.”
Mamdani, who marked 100 days in office, said: "When we talk about the importance of taking on the crisis of income inequality, we know that the most effective tool to do so is increasing union density. Organizing drives and strikes can, frankly, be lonely work. So Union Now is going to support workers and provide them with more resources, and my administration will stand right alongside them. This moment demands nothing less."
“AI and robots are coming for human jobs," the mayor warned. "Worker protections are being eroded. There are companies that think that exploitation is a viable business model. They are wrong.”
Nelson asserted that “growing union membership and bargaining power is crucial for workers' rights and economic justice.”
“Too often, the boss has all the power to starve workers during a fight," she said. "Union Now will work with unions directly to ensure workers have the means to win."
Brittany Norris, a Delta AFA Organizing Committee member and flight attendant, told the crowd that "when it comes to striking, when it comes to public actions, a lot of those things cost money and it’s a lot of time, dedication, and efforts coming from the workers."
“We continuously hear about the profits... that our industry is making, but then we’re begging for a raise that comes up close to what the cost of living increase is every year,” she added.
Sunday's Union Now launch comes amid Sanders' ongoing "Fighting Oligarchy" tour, which has drawn large crowds across the country, including in so-called "red" states. The rally also follows last year's "Workers Over Billionaires" Labor Day rallies and marches in over 1,000 locations.
The Union Now launch also coincides with growing wealth inequality not only in the United States but around a world in which the richest 10% of the global population own three-quarters of planetary wealth and account for nearly half of all consumer spending.
“If [President Donald] Trump and his fellow oligarchs get their way, we will be living in a society where fewer and fewer people have more and more wealth and more and more power, where democracy will be undermined, where workers will be thrown out on the street with no recourse," Sanders said Sunday. “That is not the America we want for ourselves or for our kids."
“The good news is," he added, "if we stand together and we not let Trump and his friends divide us up, when we stand together and fight for a government that works for all of us, there is nothing that we cannot accomplish."
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