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Tyson Foods To Spend $1.3 Billion To Automate Meat Plants (reuters.com) 135

Posted by BeauHD from the machines-to-the-rescue dept.
Tyson Foods plans to spend more than $1.3 billion to increase automation in meat plants over the next three years, Chief Executive Donnie King said on Thursday, as a U.S. labor shortage has limited production while demand is booming. Reuters reports: Meat processors have been unable to find enough workers for the past two years due to the tight labor market and health concerns during the COVID-19 pandemic. Tyson expects to boost production and reduce labor costs by expanding automation, with cumulative savings of more than $450 million projected by fiscal year 2024, King said on a webcast for investors.

The company will increasingly use machines, instead of people, to debone chicken, one of its most labor-intensive jobs and a position with high turnover, said David Bray, group president of Tyson's poultry division. A capital investment of $500 million in the area through fiscal year 2024 will generate labor savings equal to more than 2,000 jobs, he said. Profitability in Tyson's chicken unit has declined partly due to the labor shortage and because processing plants are operating below full capacity, Bray said. "We are not servicing our customers to the degree that they expect us to," Bray said.
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Tyson Foods To Spend $1.3 Billion To Automate Meat Plants More

Tyson Foods To Spend $1.3 Billion To Automate Meat Plants

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  • There is no labor shortage, only a pay shortage. (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 09, 2021 @07:53PM (#62064597)

    ...

    • You have no idea about this business. I know their NE/IA/SD plants and trust me, pay is not even close to be on their top 3 concern.

    • When it would take $12 in labor to debone $4 of chicken, paying more doesn't solve the problem.

      Chicken processing sucks. I know a few people who worked doing that. It's exactly the kind of job you WANT machines to be doing. In this case the machines are mostly replacing drunks, people who don't speak English, and others who don't see a way to get a job that doesn't totally suck.

      More generally, if you pay people $650 to stay home and smoke weed, and doing an unskilled job produces $500, most people won't go

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        What's wrong with no speaking English?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by kackle ( 910159 )
          Here, it makes life more difficult for everyone who does.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            Where is here though?

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by kackle ( 910159 )
              The U.S.A. I'm sorry, since Tyson Foods and Slashdot are based here, I meant that "here" is in the U.S.A.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

                Okay. Don't you have Spanish language stuff though? Communities, TV, jobs etc.

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by kackle ( 910159 )
                  Oh yes, people speak many languages here. But sharing a common language is much more efficient and safer than looking for language interpreters all the time. English is the most common language spoken here now so it helps to know some of it, no matter what one's primary language is.

        • Most jobs, and especially highly productive jobs, involve communicating with others. Speaking the local language is an important skill for being productive at work.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            That's my point though, is English actually the local language of the entire United States?

            My understanding is that the US doesn't have an official language.

            • Pretending to be dumb isn't a good look for you.
              You know what language is generally spoken in the United States.

            • It's not. In most places sufficiently near the U.S./Mexico border, as well as parts of most inner cities, Spanish is the most widely spoken language. However, even there, most folks other than very recent immigrants do have a working command of English, or, in my case, bad English.

              Recent immigrants do take a lot of the meat-processing jobs simply because they tend to be the cheapest labor available, and it is a labor-intensive industry as it currently stands. Nothing against them. I admire that they are

    • If a robot can do your job, why would they hire you instead of the robot? If you are happy doing something else then why perturb that?

    • Tyson is the company where managers made bets on workers getting covid [bbc.com] and took no safety precautions to prevent it.

      It's not just a pay shortage. Nobody wants to work for those fuckers unless they're desperate and have no other choice.

    • There is no labor shortage, only a pay shortage.

      Yeah, no. That's a crock of shit.

      Our area has been getting cards in the mail for over a year now from local meat packing plants, practically begging people to come work there. They're advertising pay rates way above what any other unskilled jobs make, health insurance, and cash bonuses for taking the job. Pretty good money and bennies for unskilled labor in this area. The flyer is even offering cash bonuses to people for referring workers. They simply can't fill them. And a slew of other jobs are the same w

  • Good (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rgmoore ( 133276 ) <glandauer@charter.net> on Thursday December 09, 2021 @08:02PM (#62064609) Homepage

    This is a good thing. Conditions in meat packing plants are atrocious; it's exactly the kind of dangerous, unpleasant work that really ought to be automated if it's at all possible.

    • Automation and profits is the cause of this not labor shortage. Conveyor belts can be arbitrarily sped up making it dangerous to work on a meat packing plants. Humans are not robots. If meat was manually moved, and Workers were allowed to work at safe rates, there would be no need for automations. Higher wages and added processing time should simply be added to the cost of meat.

      More expensive meat will mean less consumption and likely reduce the profits of the meat processors. They are unlikely going to r

      • Automation and profits is the cause of this not labor shortage.

        In the long run, but the labor shortage is the immediate concern. Automation was inevitable, but labor issues are accelerating the process.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by fermion ( 181285 )
          The labor shortage is caused by the automation making meat processing beyond what reasonable people can handle. One thing I learned if you only design for efficiency and profits, the you design out the humans. Some of this can be handled with training, or higher wages, but there is a limit.
        • There's no labor shortage though. If they had reasonable working conditions and pay, we'd all be lining up to go parse chicken instead of what we're doing now.
    • Especially if you are a chicken.

    • Something about meat processing plants is like how I imagine it would be to visit the Pacific garbage patch. This ugliness hidden from view, that is directly part of our lives, inseparable really. You get this sense that if we had our act together, it would all be done differently.

      Is automation part of the right way? It could be, but it could also be another part of hiding something we should seeâ¦Something about understanding our dependence on the animals and plants and other parts of nature that

      • I became vegan in my teens for health reasons (couldn't digest many animal products), but over time, I've come to see CAFOs and industrial-scale animal processing as very close to pure evil, costing society vastly more than it saves, in terms of health, pollution, worker health/safety, and many other aspects. We would be better off as a society if we ate fewer, but healthier animals, or even better yet, tried to avoid consuming animals at all. It's not my place to decide that for anyone else, and I'm not

    • Right. Also, a high level of automation throughout the economy can lead to much increased productivity which can create more room in economic equations for a Universal Basic Income. So, while we will need fewer workers, what this also can mean is that everyone can be guaranteed an income as well. It can also lead to shorter workweeks as well. People ask what will the workers do who are surplus due to automation. This is where UBI comes in. I know some people say that the new jobs will be created somewhere e

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jabuzz ( 182671 )

      Noting that US meat packing plants are filthy, unhygienic and disgusting by European standards. But hey the incident of Salmonella is only ~10 times higher in the USA than the UK.

  • This isn't new (Score:3, Insightful)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Thursday December 09, 2021 @08:17PM (#62064641)
    this has been going on since the 80s. [businessinsider.com] We just didn't talk about it. The .com and housing bubbles masked the worst of the effects, but automation has been devouring jobs for ages, and without another bubble to get the money people to open up their wallets and make it rain it's going to mean permanent recession.

    We could counter this with gov't spending (trillions are needed for infrastructure and fighting climate change), but there's no political will for it (you'd have to tax those money people, but they call the shots and funny thing they said "no"). And even that is just buying us time.

    And to anyone saying "they'll be new jobs", which jobs? Be specific. Because every time I ask that question I either get crickets or "they'll be so futuristic you can't imagine them!", which is what I was told when I was 12... after decades of job losses to automation fueled productivity gains.

    Remember, automation doesn't have to eliminate jobs, it just has to raise productivity. Companies don't hire because they've got money, they hire to meet demand.

    • Re:This isn't new (Score:5, Informative)

      by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Thursday December 09, 2021 @08:37PM (#62064683)

      And to anyone saying "they'll be new jobs", which jobs? Be specific.

      That's easy. As chicken deboning is automated, the money formerly spent on workers will go to the shareholders (as higher profits) and the customers (as lower prices). Then the people with the extra money in their pocket will either spend or invest that money. The thing they spend or invest in will be where the new jobs are.

      It has always been thus. When agriculture was automated, food prices fell, people spent the surplus on manufactured goods, and factory jobs proliferated. But the thing is, people were bought food+goods for what they used to pay for just food. Living standards rose.

      Then manufacturing automated. Prices for manufactured goods fell, and people spent their extra money on services. So they bought food+good+services for what they used to spend on just food+goods. Living standards rose again.

      Each wave of automation leads to falling prices relative to the cost of labor, and higher living standards. There is no reason to believe "this time is different." Chicken deboning is no different than any other automation.

      • Lower prices for consumers?
        It may have been thus in the past, but back then, there was competition and incentive
        to attract customers away from competitors. Tyson has no reason to offer lower prices now.
        They pretty much own and control the market. When any competitor steps up, Tyson buys them,
        or has a short discussion with farmers that if they want to continue with Tyson, well...

        There's little to no alternative to chicken in the marketplace, as it's everywhere in the food supply.
        For what alternatives do exis

      • The lack of antitrust enforcement means that the companies that own everything can keep prices where they're at or even raised them. They have no need or incentive to lower prices and therefore they're not. What you describing requires competition which we just don't have anymore. When a large corporation faces competition they just buy out their competitor. If they're not large enough to do that a billionaire will give them the money to do it because they know they'll get the money back when prices go up.

      • The company is going to pass on savings to me? Oh that’s a good one. They already know people will pay their current prices so they’ll pocket the difference. All the big shots will get bonuses.

        • They already know people will pay their current prices

          People won't pay the current price if Sanderson, Pilgrims Pride, and other chicken producers cut their prices. There are also local chicken producers nearly everywhere. Or raise your own. I have a flock in my backyard.

          People also won't pay the current price for chicken if the price of other meats is reduced. This includes beef and pork, but also plant-based meat alternatives which are dropping in price.

          • People won't pay the current price if Sanderson, Pilgrims Pride, and other chicken producers cut their prices.

            Oh I'm sure that will certainly happen.

          • People won't pay the current price if Sanderson, Pilgrims Pride, and other chicken producers cut their prices.

            They will not. They will continue to behave as a cartel and they will not compete on prices. Instead the prices will continue to go up, and so will their profits.

            There are also local chicken producers nearly everywhere.

            They are wholly irrelevant to the current discussion as they cannot compete on cost/price.

            Or raise your own. I have a flock in my backyard.

            In many cities they are not permitted, and with some reason as they can get diseases from wild birds and then transmit them to humans. In the country you can't have them without a dog, for reasons which should be obvious.

        • All the big shots will get bonuses

          Which they will either spend on luxury goods and services, paying lots of people in the process (and the jobs they pay these people to do will likely be better than deboning chickens), or which they will invest in new businesses which they couldn't have afforded before (e.g. building rockets in a quest to get to Mars) which will employ lots of people (likely doing things that are more interesting than deboning chickens.)

          What the big shots WON'T do with their bonuses is just stuff the dollars under their mat

          • Envy and class hatred drive all of U.S. politics. That's obviously true of the far-far left; that is close to being their entire platform. But what we call the political right is far from guiltless. The hatred of "illegals" would be one example . . . it is largely based on the idea that "illegals" (read: irreplaceable human beings who are undocumented because they had no other way to flee the poverty, corruption and violence caused by the U.S. "drug war") will somehow reduce their wages.

            As a society, if

      • You still dodged my question. You didn't tell me specifically what new jobs are going to be created, you just gave me a reason why new jobs would be created. How do we create service sector jobs if no one has jobs to buy things with? I mean, does it matter how cheap everything is if I don't have any money to buy it with?

        • You didn't tell me specifically what new jobs are going to be created

          Yes, I did. You will have an extra $10 in your pocket. What will you spend it on? That is the new job.

          Automation puts money into the pockets of either the shareholders or the customers (it doesn't matter which). Whatever they spend that money on is where the new jobs will be.

          This has been happening over and over and over for centuries. Living standards have gone up twentyfold, and we currently have a full-employment economy.

          You are oblivious to reality to claim that the same process is going to lead to

        • You didn't tell me specifically what new jobs are going to be created,

          Suppose in the 1930s or 1940s or 1950s I told you the new jobs would be database administrator, web designer and YouTuber, what would your reaction have been as a typical computer illiterate citizen of those decades?

          Money doesn't evaporate. Some produced goods get consumed or destroyed, but generally more automation leads to more production which leads to more goods available. The ultra-wealthy can only consume and destroy so much, so beyond a certain point most of their money goes into creating more stuff

      • the money formerly spent on workers will go to the shareholders (as higher profits) and the customers (as lower prices). Then the people with the extra money in their pocket will either spend or invest that money.

        How do you solve the problem that wealthy people have unprecedentedly large cash reserves, often stored in perpetuities here in US states which permit anonymous ones? They are investing less of the money than ever before. Nobody is passing on savings to customers either BTW, unless there is competition, and the megacorps dominating meat production today have no fear on that account because smaller processors cannot compete on cost or price.

      • I think we have to fully embrace automation as much as possible and implement a UBI. Its what makes the most sense for reducing poverty and suffering for the most people. Look, it could be great. Let the machines do all of the work and then we have enough room in the economic equation due to increase productivity to provide people with an income guarantee. We will still need workers of course, and we need to refocus colleges on training the STEM workers. There will be labor surpluses however, we can see tha

        • Agreed on the automate part. Disagree on the UBI. A UBI sets a floor beneath which wages can't fall, worsening one of the worst effects of a minimum wage: it disemploys people at the margins, especially the poor, young, and minorities, preventing them from learning marketable skills on the job.

          It also sets a floor beneath which the cost of living is unlikely to fall, again impoverishing and disempowering many of the exact people you are trying to help.

          IMO, public benefits in cash or cash equivalent form s

      • The conditions always change. In theory there is no harm in automation.

        Let's give a practical example. Automation gets rid of chicken deboning jobs. In theory, those people could be put to better use doing other things. Maybe they can become nurses and help people with healthcare. Maybe they become teacher or education assistants and boost education. Maybe they become trades people and help the construction or home renovation industry. Maybe there's some new field out there. You are absolutely right that th

        • I should add one to people are not willing or able to work.

          Being an emergency room doctor or nurse for example is a highly skilled and stressful job. How many people of that caliber are willing to do that? High-end tech people as well. Your entire society is not composed of Einsteins. The portion of your population left unemployed just might not be able to do the jobs available or be willing to invest their time/effort into become qualified for it.

    • And to anyone saying "they'll be new jobs", which jobs? Be specific. Because every time I ask that question I either get crickets or "they'll be so futuristic you can't imagine them!", which is what I was told when I was 12... after decades of job losses to automation fueled productivity gains.

      Dude, "social media specialist" is a real job now. I'm not kidding.

      I have zero fear that we will stop inventing new jobs.

      • Buddy of mine had one of those make work jobs. He works for DirecTV going around to people's houses and in theory he was helping them learn to order pay-per-view but in practice he was looking for people who had parted service but didn't know it. He made money by converting people to legitimate service.

        The company used Big Data to determine the cost of his wages was higher than the benefit of the conversions and the extra pay-per-view orders. They fired him and everyone who did the job.

        It's not jus

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      The new jobs are in skilled work and services. Monster.com lists the following areas as having big shortages:

      1. High-skilled medical, such as nurses, doctors and specialists
      2. Scientists and mathematicians
      3. Skilled trades, such as electricians, carpenters, machinists, mechanics, welders and plumbers
      4. Engineering and architecture
      5. IT computer specialists, such as IT analysts, software developers and programmers and database administrators
      6. Executives
      7. High-skilled technicians, such as health, telecommun

    • I think we have to accept automation and a UBI as the best way forward. It is the option that reduces poverty and misery the most and will lead to a happier society where people have more free time. If you look at the alternatives of massive pay inflation, you will end up creating a society which is far more miserable, mired in poverty, soaring prices, much worse economics, people still doing hellish jobs. You really need to see the basic economics to see that we have to accept automation, refocus college o

  • But think of all the illegals (Score:4, Funny)

    by Crashmarik ( 635988 ) on Thursday December 09, 2021 @09:48PM (#62064799)

    That worked there doing jobs Americans wouldn't do.

  • Cows are pretty cute [boredpanda.com]. I'm sure there is a cow out there named Sarah.

  • Learn to code ... (Score:3)

    by schwit1 ( 797399 ) on Thursday December 09, 2021 @10:30PM (#62064877)

    and fix robots. You'll be set if you can program and maintain robots.

  • Itâ(TM)s really remarkable that there are huge buckets of customers who eat Tyson Foods meats and then go off no knowing whatâ(TM)s in the Covid vaccine. America is better off without Tysons Foods. Support your local butcher and local farmers.

  • The reality is these are hideous jobs, people dont want them for a good reason. Automation will give us a more stable and predictable supply chain. Paying workers more to take these awful jobs means $20 chicken sandwiches at Popeyes. I dont know if you realize that trying to inflate the way out of a supply chain mess will increase poverty and also fuel inflation and overall make us a poorer and more miserable society so it would be outrageous that this is worth it to save these hellish jobs. We should welco

  • Yes, it's a horrible, soul-killing job. Esp. when management insists on constant "improved productivity", meaning do it faster, resulting in more accidents, shorter bathroom breaks, and overtime, which may or may not be a) voluntary and b) paid.

    Then there,s the massive increase in waste.
    Finally, job loss. And with these jobs gone, exactly what jobs will they apply for?

  • Many years ago my father ran a chicken processing factory. (This was a small facility that existed before the big conglomerates bought up everything.)
    He had some people who had developed a laser that would trim meat from chickens. As I recall, it worked well but don't know what happened to the company.
    (Might have been that people were faster/cheaper/better at the job.)

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