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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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With GOP 'Looking at' Tyson's Alleged Market Manipulation, Nebraska Candidate Osborn Says 'Enforce the Law'
"Candidate for Senate Dan Osborn is already doing more for the people affected by the Tyson closure than the current Nebraska senators," said a worker rights advocate.
Dec 12, 2025
Instead of "another investigation" into possible wrongdoing by meatpacking giant Tyson, independent US Senate candidate Dan Osborn is demanding that elected officials in Nebraska simply "pick up the damn phone" and demand action from the Trump administration following the company's closure of one of the nation's largest meat processing plants in what one antitrust expert said was a clear-cut case of market manipulation.
Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.), whom Osborn is challenging in the 2026 election, said Thursday that his team is "taking a look at any allegation of wrongdoing" by Tyson, weeks after the company announced its massive plant in Lexington, Nebraska is set to close in January—putting more than 3,000 people in a town of 11,000 out of work.
The closure comes months after Tyson boosted its stock buybacks and following an announcement that its adjusted operating income had increased by 26% compared to 2024. Tyson controls about 80% of the US beef market along with three other companies, and the Department of Justice is investigating whether the four corporations are colluding to keep beef prices high.
Despite near-record high prices in the industry, Tyson said last week it was closing the Lexington plant and scaling back operations at its facility in Amarillo, Texas to "right-size its beef business and position it for long-term success."
Basel Musharbash, an antitrust lawyer at Antimonopoly Counsel in Paris, Texas, attended a press conference with Osborn across the street from the Lexington plant this week and said that the "legal analysis here is pretty straightforward" regarding whether Tyson has engaged in market manipulation.
“The Lexington plant accounts for around 5% of the nation’s cattle," said Musharbash. "By shutting down a plant that slaughters such a large portion of the cattle in this region and the country, Tyson will single-handedly reshape the nation’s cattle markets from boom to bust.”
Ranchers will be forced "to accept lower prices, and Tyson will be able to make higher profits," he said.
Osborn and Musharbash say Tyson has broken the 2021 Packers and Stockyards Act, which prohibits meatpackers from engaging "in any course of business or [doing] any act for the purpose or with the effect of manipulating or controlling prices."
Addressing Ricketts on social media, Osborn said Tyson workers "don’t need another useless congressional report that leads to nothing. We need ACTION!"
"Tyson workers and Nebraska ranchers need you to demand that [US Agriculture] Secretary Brooke Rollins immediately initiate an action to hold Tyson accountable for any market manipulation," he said.
The USDA told the Nebraska Examiner this week that it is monitoring "the closure of the plant to ensure compliance with the Packers and Stockyards Act," but Musharbash said Rollins can and should "compel Tyson to either keep the plant open or sell the plant to an upstart rival who will introduce honest competition into this cartelized industry."
"There is nothing left for Ricketts to 'look into,' and Nebraskans certainly don’t need some intern on Ricketts’ staff to write a research paper about this issue for the next six months while Tyson hollows out the Lexington community for its selfish gain," added Musharbash. "Nebraska—and this whole country—deserves better leaders than this."
Osborn pointed out Thursday that Ricketts has taken more than $70,000 in campaign donations from Tyson.
“The people of Lexington need their elected officials to fight now more than ever,” Osborn said at the press conference this week. “The law that’s been on the books for over 100 years should be enforced... So pick up the damn phone, call Brooke Rollins, and get the USDA to enforce the law.”
By visiting Lexington and speaking out against Tyson's gutting of thousands of jobs, former Federal Trade Commission member Alvaro Bedoya said that "candidate for Senate Dan Osborn is already doing more for the people affected by the Tyson closure than the current Nebraska senators."
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Tyson to Close Major Beef Facility, Shafting 3,000 Workers After Boosting Stock Buybacks
"It’s no secret that just a few years ago, packers like Tyson were making windfall profits while the rest of the industry was continuously in the red," said a Republican US senator from Nebraska.
Nov 24, 2025
Tyson Foods, the largest meat supplier in the United States, is shutting down a Nebraska beef-processing plant that employs more than 3,000 people just months after the company rewarded shareholders by boosting its dividend and ramping up stock buybacks.
The company said late last week that its decision to shutter the Lexington, Nebraska plant and scale back shifts at its Amarillo, Texas facility is "designed to right size its beef business and position it for long-term success" even as beef prices are close to record highs. The Wall Street Journal reported that Tyson and other meatpackers, which are facing federal scrutiny for allegedly colluding to drive up prices, "have been losing hundreds of millions of dollars processing beef because of the lowest amount of cattle on U.S. pastures since the 1950s."
Tyson, the latest company to cut thousands of jobs after prioritizing stock-boosting share buybacks, said it intends to provide "relocation benefits" to impacted workers, but provided no details.
"Tyson Foods recognizes the impact these decisions have on team members and the communities where we operate," the company said in a statement.
The plant in Lexington, which has a population of 11,000, is one of the largest beef-processing facilities in the United States. US Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.), a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, said in a statement that she was "extremely disappointed" by Tyson's decision to close the Lexington plant, warning it would "have a devastating impact on a truly wonderful community, the region, and our state."
"It’s no secret that just a few years ago, packers like Tyson were making windfall profits while the rest of the industry was continuously in the red," Fischer added. "As we head into the holiday season, I call on Tyson to do everything in its power to take care of the families affected by this short-sighted decision."
Tyson's announcement came days after the company said its adjusted operating income increased by 26% this fiscal year compared to 2024. The company also said it repurchased 3.5 million of its own shares for $196 million.
In early August, Tyson announced that its board "approved an increase of 43 million shares authorized for repurchase under the company’s share repurchase program."
Stock buybacks have long been associated with mass layoffs, wage stagnation, and other harms to workers.
"Tens of thousands of workers are losing their jobs in thousands of companies only because CEOs and their major stockholders want to make a quick killing by artificially jacking up the price of their stock," Les Leopold, executive director of the Labor Institute, told Common Dreams last year after mass layoffs at John Deere.
"We must always call stock buybacks for what they really are: blatant stock manipulation," he added.
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