California’s Smithfield Foods Meatpacking Plant in Vernon Is Closing

Aug 1, 2022
California’s Smithfield Foods Meatpacking Plant in Vernon Is Closing

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Once I arrived earlier than daybreak on the pork processing plant, I may see lights from the downtown Los Angeles skyline flickering a couple of miles to the north. It was a type of heavy, gloomy mornings — one with a thick marine layer that so many people Southern Californians know to anticipate within the summertime.

I’m not new to the area, however I’m new to The New York Instances. I joined the paper in June after spending eight years at The Los Angeles Instances, the place I labored as a nationwide correspondent. Earlier than that, I lined state politics and coverage at The Denver Submit, a newspaper I grew up studying as a Colorado native.

Now, as an economics correspondent for The Instances, primarily based in Los Angeles, I’ll be roving the West and writing about this various and dynamic a part of the nation and its financial challenges.

So after I learn that Smithfield Meals would shut an iconic meatpacking plant in Vernon — an industrial metropolis not removed from downtown Los Angeles — and that roughly 1,800 folks would lose their jobs, I saved coming again to 2 questions: Why was it needed, and what is going to occur to the employees?

As we speak I printed an article that captures the controversy over ​the closing​ and whom is accountable — ​the corporate or California?

Smithfield officers instructed me that escalating prices of doing enterprise in California led to their choice. State leaders say that rivalry doesn’t match the truth, noting that California’s financial progress outpaced the nation’s and that the state remained the tech capital of the nation.

The Smithfield plant, related to the Farmer John model, dates again to 1931 and is thought for its big mural depicting a pastoral rural panorama that transports you removed from the concrete corridors of Vernon. For many years, Farmer John produced the broadly well-known Dodger Canine.

Greater than 80 p.c of the staff on the plant are Latino — a mixture of immigrants and first-generation native-born. Most are older than 50.

Exterior, I visited with Teresa Robles, 57, who has labored right here since 2018. She makes $17.85 an hour chopping tripe most days.

She knew the historical past of the plant, and when whispers began in early June that it will shut, she shortly grew involved. She puzzled if anybody would provide her a dependable job at her age, and whether or not she would ever discover work at a comparable wage.

“They’re kicking us out with no solutions,” Robles instructed me, blinking again tears.

The manufacturing facility is scheduled to shut early subsequent yr. The employees’ union says it’s looking for new jobs for its members and a purchaser for the plant. I’ll be watching what occurs subsequent.

Kurtis Lee is an economics correspondent for The Instances, primarily based in Los Angeles.


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Thanks for studying. We’ll be again tomorrow.

P.S. Right here’s in the present day’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Animal image of Most cancers (4 letters).

Soumya Karlamangla, Briana Scalia and Jack Kramer contributed to California As we speak. You possibly can attain the crew at CAtoday@nytimes.com.

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