Number of Hispanic Employees Increasing at Tyson Foods

When the aggregate employment figures are tallied between Tyson Foods Inc. and its newest division, IBP Inc., the total number of Hispanic employees is expected to increase.

Of Tyson’s 72,000 employees, 25-30 percent are Hispanic. IBP has 52,000 employees and the percentage of Hispanic workers is higher than at Tyson.

Tyson, currently tangled in a legal battle with the U.S. Justice Department over its alleged wrongful hiring practices of illegal aliens, has actually gone out of its way to verify its employees’ citizenship status.

Tyson, headquartered in Springdale, supported the Basic Pilot Program that ended Jan. 1. It was a document-verification program founded in 1996 under a different name. Originally, the program had methods of verifying green cards. Tyson took part in the program on a voluntary basis.

While it couldn’t be used as a screening device, once employees were hired their documents were run through a database that the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Social Security Administration would study, then return the information to Tyson on whether or not the documentation was valid.

Tyson would then approach the employee and inform that person of a grace period they had to get any problems such as the changing of names, marriage, transposed numbers, etc., cleaned up.

That program was not only for resident aliens, but citizens whose documentations needed to be validated.