Cheap meat and undocumented workers
But do surprise raids really work? Only temporarily, because they do not address the underlying issue of the market’s demand for cheap meat and the cheap labor to supply it.
As you grill out this holiday, you may want to consider the high cost of your steaks, hamburgers and sausages.
On April 5, at a beef slaughterhouse in Bean Station, Tenn., U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement used helicopters, armed federal agents and roadblocks to round up nearly 100 workers. It was the largest immigration raid in more than a decade.
After the raids, terrified families tried to find loved ones. The next day, more than 500 children missed school. Civil rights advocates and religious groups protested the forcible separation of mothers, fathers and children, then raised $60,000 to help.
Theoretically, a public crackdown on undocumented workers, overwhelmingly Latino, deters illegal immigration, but many people are hurt in the process. The plants go idle as the chaos ripples through towns sustained by worker spending power. Workers flee to other slaughterhouses, where managers are happy to hire people for the most dangerous manufacturing job in America,
The cycle is familiar. Americans want cheap meat. That requires low wages. So plants hire undocumented workers. ICE raids the plants. Latino families cry. Schoolteachers are put in the untenable position of either supervising children after hours or sending them home, knowing their parents are missing. People are appalled by the human cost, momentarily. Then, the cycle begins again.
At one time, labor unions made sure that workers were paid well and protected from injury. Then, beginning in the 1960s, meatpackers shut down the old unionized urban plants and moved into right-to-work rural states, breaking the backs of the unions. In the 1990s, the North American Free Trade Agreement helped propel thousands of Latinos — many undocumented — into meatpacking, lowering wages even further. Employers welcomed them. Undocumented workers were easier to control and much harder to unionize than U.S.-born workers. The speed of production lines increased. Injuries increased. Union representation decreased further, along with wages and working conditions.
Then came the backlash under President George W. Bush. On a single day in 2006, ICE raided six Swift & Co. meatpacking plants in six states arresting 1,300 workers — including 300 in Cactus, Texas — about 10 percent of Swift’s workforce. Most were deported. “Operation Wagon Train” remains the largest worksite enforcement action in U.S. history. Nearly a quarter of Swift’s workers at the time were undocumented, and Swift had to raise wages by about 8 percent to stay open.
But do surprise raids really work? Only temporarily, because they do not address the underlying issue of the market’s demand for cheap meat and the cheap labor to supply it.
Within months of the Swift raids, ICE raided the world’s largest slaughterhouse, owned by Smithfield Foods, in Tar Heel, N.C. They arrested 21 workers, surreptitiously pulling Latino workers off the line. Workers quietly put down their knives, took off their protective gear and headed to HR, where they were put in handcuffs.
Word spreads when “la migra” — Spanish slang for the immigration service — is on the way. In Tar Heel, within weeks of the raid, nearly half of the plant’s workforce — more than 2,000 employees and their families — simply left the region. The loss of workers forced Smithfield to increase wages, which attracted more AfricanAmericans, who were far more likely to vote for union representation. By 2008, workers had organized under the United Food and Commercial Workers Union. It was an unusual victory in the South, where right-to-work, antiunion views flourish.
The Bush administration focused on rounding up workers rather than punishing business owners. Now, it appears President Trump has rediscovered that playbook. In December, Trump commuted the 27-year prison sentence of the former chief executive of the Postville plant. In Tennessee, no charges were filed against the owners of Southern Provision, near Knoxville. Usually, large employers are slapped with fines — the cost of doing business — and they lie low, then go back to business as usual.
Meanwhile, agents have been ordered to quadruple worksite inspections. Will a slaughterhouse in Texas — which processes more meat than any state but Nebraska — be next?
It’s an open secret. Americans want cheap meat. We consume more meat per capita than any other country. We want our holiday hams and roasts. We also demand, or at least tolerate, the occasional public display of immigration enforcement, despite the human suffering.
Waltz is a journalist and author of “Hog Wild: The Battle for Workers’ Rights at the World’s Largest Slaughterhouse,” released May 15 by the University of Iowa Press. She is an assistant professor of journalism at Hampton University.