Tyson Foods will cut about 10% of its corporate jobs and 15% of its senior leadership roles, the meat company’s chief told employees on Wednesday.
The move comes five weeks after the largest U.S. meat company by sales announced it would lay off nearly 1,700 employees in Arkansas and Virginia with the closure of two chicken processing plants.
On Wednesday, Tyson Chief Executive Donnie King said in a memo to employees that most of the affected workers would be laid off this week, CNBC reported.
“This is not an easy day,” King said in the note, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Tyson Foods, the largest U.S. meat supplier by sales, is eliminating 15% of its senior leadership positions and 10% of corporate roles https://t.co/Ol4hQsYdHJ
— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) April 26, 2023
According to its latest annual securities filing, Tyson Foods, based in Arkansas, employs about 142,000 people globally, the newspaper reported. About 124,000 of those employees work in the U.S., with 118,000 working at non-corporate sites.
Reuters was the first outlet to report the job eliminations.
Tyson produces about one out of every five pounds of chicken, beef and pork sold in the U.S., according to The Wall Street Journal.
A Tyson spokesperson said the company is “constantly evaluating how it executes its strategy,” the newspaper reported. The job cuts at the higher levels of the company will allow Tyson Foods to operate with “more speed, collaboration and agility,” the spokesperson said.
Senior leadership roles at Tyson include mostly vice president and senior vice president positions, according to The Wall Street Journal.
“We will drive efficiency by focusing on fewer initiatives with greater intensity and removing duplication of work,” King said, according to CNBC.
Tyson Foods had about 6,000 U.S. employees working in corporate offices as of Oct. 1, 2022, the news outlet reported.
The company fired Chris Langholz as president of its international business in August 2022, Reuters reported. The following month, Tyson officials said that Noelle O’Mara, the head of the company’s prepared foods division, had left the company.
John R. Tyson, great-grandson of the company’s founder, took over as finance chief. He was arrested in November for criminal trespassing and public intoxication, according to CNBC.
Tyson has struggled over the past year. The company posted its biggest percentage drop in quarterly profit in more than a decade, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The company’s profit for the three-month period ending Dec. 31, 2022, fell to $316 million, compared to $1.1 billion over the final quarter of 2021, according to the newspaper.
Tyson’s stock has dropped nearly 36% over the past 12 months and was down 1% on Wednesday.
