State, local officials working to keep Pilgrim’s in El Dorado

By JOHN WORTHEN
News-Times Staff
Arkansas Governor Mike Beebe said that he is willing to personally meet with officials from Pilgrim’s Pride Corp. if it would help sway the company’s decision to stay in Union County.

Beebe, who visited South Arkansas last week for a groundbreaking ceremony at TETRA Technology’s new calcium chloride plant in Parkers Chapel, spoke candidly about the poultry giant’s future in El Dorado.


“Certainly we want to do what we can to keep Pilgrim’s Pride here,” Beebe said. “We will see what we can do within our legal limitations to ease (the company’s problems) so that they can maintain the plant. I would be happy to sit down with them if that would help.”

Pilgrim’s Pride announced earlier this month that if quality control and financial issues at its Union County facilities are not immediately addressed, then a full closure may be imminent.

According to Pilgrim’s spokesman Ray Atkinson, quality and productivity records at the Union County plants are falling “well below other Pilgrim’s facilities.”

Atkinson added that Pilgrim’s hasn’t recouped any of the costs from recent upgrades and renovations here.
Pilgrim’s operates a processing plant on South West Avenue, a feed mill on Arkansas 7 and a hatchery inside the Union County Industrial Park.

The company employs more than 1,600 workers, along with hundreds of contract growers in Union County and northern Louisiana.

Since Pilgrim’s Pride’s grim announcement, local and state officials have been scrambling to figure out how they can enhance the company’s local operations.

Officials with the Arkansas Economic Development Commission are already drafting proposals to present to top-level management at Pilgrim’s Pride in hopes that something can be done to bolster worker performance.

Without citing specific plans, Steve Sparks, division director for training with the AEDC, said that success of his agency’s proposal to Pilgrim’s will rest on how well the company receives change, and “whether or not they want to invest what it will take to turn things around.”

Sparks said a proposal will be presented to Pilgrim’s Pride officials sometime this week.

The AEDC has in its arsenal “successful tools and programs to help retrain deficient workers at plants like Pilgrim’s,” according to the agency.

These tools have already been used with success at several Arkansas manufacturers, and Beebe and other state officials seem confident that they can work at Pilgrim’s.

Beebe cited Hino Motors, a Japanese truck manufacturer that operates a parts facility in Marion, as a specific example of how successful the AEDC programs can be.

That company saw worker turnover rates as high as 50 percent before the AEDC intervened, Beebe noted. Now, Hino’s turnover rate is hovering around 1 percent.

“We have turned Hino around with these programs,” Beebe said. “Hino was not that happy in Arkansas... . We came in and structured a program that put their workers through simulated workforce training and now they area happy as they can be.”

On the local front, Don Wales, president of the El Dorado Chamber of Commerce, said he had a “very positive” meeting last week with the state’s top economic official.

Maria Haley, executive director of the Arkansas Economic Development Commission, spent several hours with Wales and other local officials discussing the future of Pilgrim’s Pride in Union County.

“We are working as quickly as we can to get results,” Wales said. “The AEDC understands our situation, and they are very concerned about that. I think things can be turned around to Pilgrim’s satisfaction, but it will take real commitment on the part of Pilgrim’s Pride’s management, and from the state and local community.”

Like Beebe, Haley has also pledged to do whatever she can to help sway Pilgrim’s officials to keep their Union County facilities open.

But, she cautioned, it will take high levels of interest from everyone involved.

“Unless you have a three-way partnership, it’s not going to work,” Haley said. “We are currently involved in ongoing discussions with (local) leadership about what they need to do to take care of issues at Pilgrim’s. We are very engaged on this matter.”

Meanwhile, Pilgrim’s officials are mum on the future of their operations here. Atkinson said last week that “there are no new developments,” and that the company is “still evaluating the situation on a daily basis.”

“We know that changes are needed there, and they are needed right now,” Atkinson said. “This is a very serious situation.”