Wayne Davis of Davenport and his wife Cheryl worked at the Tyson Foods beef processing plant in Joslin for 37 years before it abruptly closed in mid-August.
They were among hundreds of laid-off workers who streamed into Vibrant Arena at The MARK Wednesday, Sept. 2 for a huge job fair and information workshops.
When it used to be the IBP plant, Wayne started at $6 an hour and he last made $28.50 an hour in food packaging, in a job just under supervisor. He’s 65 and Cheryl is 62; they don’t want to retire and they’re not sure what they’re going to do next.
They can’t afford to pay COBRA for health insurance, which would be up to 102% of what their old premium costs were.
“We're paying over $1,000 right now for our house payment. I have a truck payment, 7-year loan. I've only paid a year and a half on it. That's $720,” Cheryl said, noting her salary was $22.10 an hour, but they also have to pay bills for gas, light, cable, water, sewer, property taxes and vehicle taxes.
“My basic thing is I'm gonna try to hang on to my vehicle 'cause I've got A1 credit. But if I can't, that's gonna have to go before my house,” she said. “I got a 20-year loan on my house yet and I've got 6.5 on my vehicle.”
“The people here say, you know, well, what do you want to try now? I don't have a clue,” Cheryl said. “Not a clue.”
They haven’t filed for unemployment benefits yet, hoping to find another job first. “And that's the thing with Social Security, they do not give you enough,” Cheryl said.
“We'd never been to a job fair before, so we're just kind of like learning as we go,” she said. “Both of us want to stay on the Iowa side for another job, you know. He has applied for AutoZone.”
“It’s really stressful,” Wayne said.
“I don't know much about computers,” said Cheryl, who worked in boxing and packaging at Tyson. “I'm not smart on a cell phone, you know, nothing like that.”
“I feel a majority of these places, they want younger people, not somebody that's going to retire within 2 years or 5 years from now,” she added. “I'm just, I'm lost. I'm frustrated. I'm angry. You know, I feel somebody in Tyson knew this was going to happen. That's why they walked away from the table.”
The decision to close the Tyson Foods plant in Joslin (on Aug. 14) resulted in over 2,500 workers losing their jobs, creating a significant impact on the regional workforce and surrounding communities.
On Aug. 13, the company announced it planned to close its beef plant in Joslin, and its case-ready facility in Eagle Mountain, Utah. Tyson is also pursuing the sale of its beef facility in Pasco, Washington.
“Tyson Foods will anchor its beef business around three strategically located beef facilities in the central United States: Dakota City, Nebraska; Holcomb, Kansas and Amarillo, Texas, to create a more competitive footprint amidst one of the most historic cattle shortages the country has ever experienced,” the meatpacking giant said.
Over 100 employers at fair
Over 100 employers signed up for the four-hour job fair on the arena floor Wednesday, which was organized in just a week and a half.
Teresa Cherry, executive director of the Title I services for the American Job Center in Rock Island (which serves Rock Island, Henry and Mercer counties), helped coordinate Wednesday’s event.
She’s worked with other partners to put on similar job fairs, but nothing this large before.
“I don't recall us ever having something this big,” Cherry said. “We have had job fairs and we work very diligently. The coordination of this was in conjunction with our partners in Iowa. So Iowa works diligently, was very helpful in this. We do a lot of job fairs that are smaller, that are more targeted to things like a certain manufacturing or healthcare. I've never done anything at this scale.”
“Which is a very humbling experience for me to have all the businesses calling, signing up, wanting to help,” Cherry said. “Every mayor in the Quad Cities, the county boards have been adamant in helping us pull this off. It's amazing what we can do as a community.”
“2,500 jobs is a lot to absorb for a community. And so 1 opening, 2 openings, 100 openings, it doesn't matter to us. We want to just keep our folks here,” she added. “There are a lot of people who are scared right now, and that's our job, my job, is to help them find a way to have a job that they like, that is self-sustaining, and they can support their families.”
Dozens more nonprofits, educational institutions and social service organizations also filled the arena lobby to offer help. They ran the gamut from World Relief, SAL Community Services and QC Alliance for Immigrants and Refugees, to Black Hawk College, Eastern Iowa Community Colleges, IowaWORKS, Dress for Success and National Alliance for Mental Illness.
“Every social service agency knows every other social service agency, and so we just put out the word and they came running to help,” Cherry said. “Like I said, it's phenomenal. It takes a village and our village stepped up and they're doing everything they can to help people through a really awful time in their lives. And that says a lot about the Quad Cities.”
“I'm hoping none of these people have to go on unemployment,” she added. “I'm hoping they get a job and if they get a job and maybe need just a little bit of training from my office. That's my hope. But we'll be prepared if they need that.”
An “amazing” response
“It was insane. The response has been amazing,” said Tyler Lanz, regional partnership manager for Eastern Iowa Workforce Board. “And from outside the Quad Cities, we’ve had quite a few employers, too. We really want to prioritize the Quad Cities, and keep people here.”
“We had over 100 employers sign up and really looking to connect with these workers. So I'm really excited for the response and really happy that everybody was able to accommodate this on such short notice too,” she added.
Every August, her organization coordinates the Eastern Iowa Success Fair, at NorthPark Mall. “But that one we have a lot longer to plan it. We pulled this one together in just the last few weeks, and so it's really been an amazing feat of teamwork here,” Lanz said of the Tyson event.
“We know these folks have industrial experience. We still need labor,” said Chris Caves, Grow Quad Cities’ vice president for business retention, expansion and workforce. “We still need labor in the Quad Cities. It's why you get 100 companies to sound the call.”
“I spend all my time out talking to manufacturers. So I talk to about 125 a year. So when I knew the plant closed, I messaged all of them that are in my list,” she said. “And just the sheer number of them that showed up here today gives me confidence the labor or the Quad-City workforce can handle the displacement. There are vacancies. There's a place for these folks. They don't have to leave the Quad Cities.”
“These people (employers) are all— they all have jobs. Not a single one of them is here just as a PR move,” Caves said. “Not a single one.”
About 80% of employers at the fair were manufacturers, such as Schebler, but the tables varied with other industries as well – including Frontier Hospitality, Hotel Blackhawk and The Current Iowa, UnityPoint Health, and the U.S. Navy.
“With this big of an influx of manufacturing talent, we wanted to make sure that they had the manufacturing jobs available,” Caves said. “There are a few like healthcare, social services, education, things like that, in case people are looking for a career change.”
It’s also important to educate businesses that training dollars are available for potential employees, and they don’t have to fund it themselves.
“You don't have to pay for this all on your own. And this is a great reason or a great example of why those dollars— to see those dollars in action,” Caves said. “So hopefully we can keep doing that work and spending down those dollars that, I mean, they're allotted through the federal Title I line items. So they just come down locally. And we get businesses to take advantage.”
Plus, there are many companies that have those internal tuition reimbursement benefits, she added. “Otherwise, there's dollars available through the workforce system. The community colleges have dollars available. There's tons of resources to support that. And the response has just been amazing.”
Information workshops
In one of the workshops (offered in more than one language), Andres Mendez, senior benefits advisor with U.S. Department of Labor Chicago office, reviewed health insurance options, including COBRA and the Affordable Care Act plans (through the marketplace at healthcare.gov).
“Some people find that the marketplace is generally cheaper than COBRA, although you'd be surprised, sometimes it's not,” he said. “Where do you go to look around for that? The marketplace is the one that says you can enroll in individual coverage, healthcare.gov. We can go on that website and find out.
“If you're someone who, let's say, uses your insurance coverage quite frequently and you’ve met or you're reaching your deductible and out-of-pocket max, well, in that circumstance, you might easily run into a situation where the math works out in favor of COBRA rather than anything else because you're very close to the plan paying out at a higher level,” Mendez said.
“Again, these are things that you will have to look at. It's unfortunately homework,” he said. “But it'll vary by person. There's no real way to say that, you know, this is clearly the better option over another.”
Lori Warren, program director for the Rock Island office of American Job Center, reviewed the benefits available to dislocated workers, under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA). She spoke from experience, having been laid off 17 years ago from a community college.
The WIOA funds education and training to pursue a new job.
“We will work with you and the school to get you into that training and fund that training,” Warren said. “Tuition, books, fees, supplies, equipment, licensing, tools, whatever you need to do that training and to work in that field. There are spending limits. We don’t let you go, I’m gonna blow 100 grant on an education….it’s a great program.”
American Job Center (open 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m. M-F at 500 42nd St., Suite 6, Rock Island) can work with local schools like Black Hawk to create classes specifically for Tyson workers, Warren said.
“We have done it in the past. We just did it a couple years ago when John Deere had their mass layoff in '24. We were a great class,” she said. “If you want something and you don't see it on here, still talk to us. Just because it's not on here doesn't mean it's not approvable.”
“Understand that WIOA is represented in every county in every state across the board, functioning under the Department of Labor,” Warren added. “So even if you don't stay in this area and you move somewhere else, this program will be representative. There will be a workforce office that can help you. You will still be a dislocated worker and eligible under the guidelines of that program.”
Chris Zionic of the Illinois Department of Employment Security encouraged the Tyson workers to file for unemployment, even though they are still being paid through Oct. 12, since they are not working or providing services to Tyson.
“There's no reason legally under the Unemployment Act to
wait,” he said. “I know that that was probably what their intention was with the letter. If you’re not working, you can file.”
Needing help with English
Tyson employed many immigrants and refugees (representing over 25 countries) and English is a challenge for some foreign-born workers, said Isaac Carr, director of citizenship for QC Alliance for Immigrants and Refugees (QCAIR).
“Number one, there are a lot of engineers who are leaving Tyson right now, and those engineers are needed with other companies. A lot of these people speak English, but some are just limited, but they are experts,” he said. “That's the problem.”
“I would say their supervisory staff spoke English very well,” Carr said of the Joslin plant. “But the rest of the people just needed to learn how to work their line, and that was it.”
Many laid-off workers will need English as a Second Language (ESL) class, to improve job prospects, he said.
“Learning how to speak English will get you from one point to another, and that's one thing. So people need to understand it is important to just speak that language,” Carr said. “That's what they need.”
QCAIR offers free job search services, including help writing a resume, he noted.
“You can have as many skills as you can, but you need a resume. So we're helping them to build their resume. And what makes it easier for us, some of them did only one job. They only knew Tyson,” Carr said. “For 25 years they work for Tyson. So we also have to put together their expertise of what they did. And other people work for 2 years, 3 years, for 1 year. But a lot of them who work 2, 3 different jobs also makes it good because of what you did.
“We build their resume and we help them to do application. We advise a lot of them, do not wait for your October deadline to find a job,” he said.
On Aug. 27, the Party for Socialism and Liberation organized a protest for Tyson workers and community members at the Rock Island County administration building to demand they put pressure on Illinois Gov. Pritzker to save the Joslin plant and reinstate the 2,500 jobs the corporation has cut without legal notice.
They want the state to use eminent domain to save the plant and reinstate jobs. It is estimated the Quad Cities, where most of the workers reside, will lose over $116 million in wages and tens of millions of dollars from the local economy without an intervention, according to PSL, which also organized a large rally outside the plant on Aug. 21.
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