Tyson adds 300 jobs in West Tennessee
Tyson Foods Inc., which already has 5,000 employees in Tennessee at facilities in Goodlettsville, Newbern and Shelbyville, Tenn., said Wednesday it plans to invest $80 million at its poultry processing plant in Obion County in West Tennessee.
Tyson, which is based in Springdale, Ark., plans to add 25,000 square feet and new production lines to its Union City plant, effectively doubling its output capabilities. Construction is scheduled to begin this fall and the expansion is expected to be operational by mid-2019. Tyson’s Union City complex supplies chicken for a national food service customer.
“Customer and consumer demand for protein, especially chicken, is increasing so we’re investing in projects that build on our strengths, expand our capabilities and increase our capacity,” Tyson’s Doug Ramsey, group president of poultry, said in a statement.
Chattanooga State gets funds for retraining
The Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development said Wednesday it will give Chattanooga State Community College $1.08 million to provide personnel to oversee and deliver career services to youth, adults, and dislocated workers in Hamilton and four surrounding counties.
Funded by the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA), the contract will be managed by the College’s Division of Economic and Community Development and will pay for staffing at Job Center locations in Eastgate Town Center, Kimball and Dayton, as well as outreach in Bledsoe and Sequatchie counties for fiscal year 2017-2018.
UnitedHealth picks Wichmann as CEO
UnitedHealth Group has picked company President David Wichmann to replace CEO Stephen Hemsley in a long-planned transition that Wall Street greeted with polite applause.
The nation’s largest health insurer says Wichmann, 54, will take over Sept. 1, and Hemsley will become executive chairman of the company’s board. Current Chairman Richard Burke will shift to lead independent director.
Wichmann, a former partner with Arthur Andersen, joined UnitedHealth in 1998, a year after Hemsley arrived, and has worked through several key executive roles. He has overseen the company’s largest business, its health benefits segment, since 2014.
Hemsley said in a statement that the timing was right, “as the company is performing strongly and has a positive outlook for the forseeable future.”
UnitedHealth is coming off a second quarter in which it made $2.28 billion and raised its forecast for 2017, a year in which analysts who follow the company expect it to bring in around $200 billion in revenue.
Judge OKs Takata bid to halt some lawsuits
A Delaware bankruptcy judge is temporarily halting the prosecution of lawsuits filed by Hawaii, New Mexico and the U.S. Virgin Islands against Japanese auto-parts supplier Takata over its lethally defective air bag inflators.
Judge Brendan Shannon ordered the 90-day stay Wednesday after hearing arguments last week on Takata’s request to halt hundreds of air bag-related lawsuits while it works on a reorganization plan.
Shannon also granted Takata’s request to temporarily halt individual lawsuits against automobile manufacturers who installed the faulty air bags. But he refused to extend that ruling to scores of lawsuits consolidated in a federal multi-district litigation case in Miami.
Takata said allowing the lawsuits to proceed would jeopardize its restructuring efforts.
Takata was forced into bankruptcy amid lawsuits, multimillion-dollar fines and crushing air bag recall costs.