Word: hogs
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...more than $3 million Albert Lea handed out to help reopen the plant represented only the latest installment in corporate-welfare payouts. Because hog killing created serious pollution problems, Albert Lea earlier had kicked in $3.4 million to build a wastewater-treatment plant devoted mostly to servicing the pig factory. The hogs had your help as well: the Federal Government contributed $25.5 million, while the state of Minnesota gave $5.1 million. Total cost of the sewage plant: $34 million. The city also built new roads and water lines to the plant, built a parking lot and came up with...
That was in August 1992. Seventeen months later, in January 1994, Seaboard announced that it would shutter its hog-slaughtering operations and lay off upwards of 600 employees. The company said it would keep about 300 workers to process and produce ready-to-buy meats like bacon, sausage and ham. (The number of employees eventually dropped to about 200, and Seaboard sold the business...
...relocate. The Albert Lea work force was unionized; wages had risen to $19,100 a year--still $3,100 below their level in 1983, but too rich for Seaboard's blood. Guymon, by contrast, promised low-wage, nonunion labor. Also, Seaboard had decided it wanted to raise its own hogs for slaughter, not just buy them from farmers. Minnesota banned corporate hog farms. Oklahoma had had a similar ban but had repealed it before Seaboard came along...
When Seaboard moved on to Guymon, it left behind in Albert Lea the abandoned hog-slaughtering building, empty parking lots, a waste-treatment plant that now operates at only 50% of capacity and higher sewer bills to pay for it. And when Seaboard walked, the state had to come up with some $700,000 to retrain displaced workers or help them find new jobs...
Some parents began to complain that their children were getting no education at all. But when the school district proposed $1.6 million in bond issues for new classrooms, equipment and buses, voters said no. The reason? A general anger directed at the huge hog farms. And a belief that Seaboard Corp. was not paying its way. Which, of course...