Employee shortage concerns loom in immigrant-heavy meatpacking

When Martha Kebede’s adult sons immigrated from Ethiopia and reunited with her in South Dakota this year, they had few work opportunities.

Lacking English skills, the brothers took jobs at Smithfield Foods’ Sioux Falls pork plant, grueling and increasingly risky work as the coronavirus sickened thousands of meatpacking workers nation- wide. One day half the work- ers on a slicing line vanished; later the brothers tested pos- itive for the COVID-19 virus.

“It was very, very sad,” Kebede said. “The boys teared up seeing everyone.”

The brothers — who declined to be identified for fear of workplace retaliation — are among roughly 175,000 immigrants in U.S. meatpacking jobs. The industry has historically relied on foreign-born workers — from people in the country ille- gally to refugees — for some of America’s most danger- ous jobs.

Now that reliance and uncertainty about a virus that’s killed at least 20 work- ers and temporarily shut- tered several plants fuels concerns about possible labor shortages to meet demand for beef, pork and chicken.

Companies struggling to hire before the pandemic are spending millions on fresh incentives. Their hiring capability hinges on unemployment, industry changes, employees’ feelings about safety, and President Don- ald Trump’s aggressive and erratic immigration policies.

Trump has restricted nearly all immigration, but his administration recently granted seasonal workers 60-day extensions, affect- ing a smattering in meat and poultry.

Roughly 350 foreign work- ers were certified for meat and poultry gigs in 2019, according to Daniel Costa at the Economic Policy Institute. Such H-2B visa holders, capped at 66,000 annually, are commonly used in land- scaping and resorts.

But there’s been willingness to expand. A plan to add 35,000 seasonal workers — which Trump supports in tight labor markets — was suspended in April for “present economic circumstances.”

Immigrants make up nearly 40% of the industry’s roughly 470,000 workers, with higher concentrations in states like South Dakota, where they are 58% of workers, and Nebraska, where they’re 66%, according to the nonprofit Migration Policy Institute. Estimates on illegal immi- grants vary from 14% to the majority at some plants.

The industry argues it offers ample jobs with ben- efits and opportunities to advance for all workers. Paulina Francisco said her 21 years at Smithfield in Sioux City, Iowa, helped her buy a home, something she didn’t think possible when she immigrated from Guatemala. She’s now a citizen.

Still, most jobs are rural, limiting workers’ access to lawyers, favorable union laws and other jobs. Hourly pay averages as low as $12.50 for bac k breaking work, often conducted side-byside. Workers in the country illegally fear deportation for speaking up.

“Vulnerable populations work well for them,” Joshua Specht, a University of Notre Dame professor, said of the industry.

Chicken plants extensively recruited immigrants in the 1990s as union organizing among majority African American workers increased.