That Chicken just didn't turn itself into a tasty 3-Piece Dinner, now did it?
[...] Spanish predominates, but is not the only foreign language. Lao is heard from a couple in the corner, and a threesome from the Marshall Islands are speaking a Polynesian language. Within less than two decades, the poultry industry has become a key site for “workers of the world” to come together in a region of the U.S. -- the South -- that received few foreign immigrants during the 20th century. Attracted by employment opportunities in the poultry industry, Latin Americans first began to enter northwest Arkansas in the late 1980s. Today, about three-quarters of plant labor forces are Latin American, with Southeast Asians and Marshallese accounting for a large percentage of the remaining workers. U.S.-born workers are few and far between.[294]
As noted above, workers in the meatpacking industry hold a variety of immigration statuses, though many are undocumented and without permission to work. Estimates put the number of undocumented workers in the United States at more than eight million.[295] Nearly 60 percent of them are migrant workers from Mexico.[296] Many have been in the country for years working long hours for low pay in demanding, dirty, and dangerous jobs. They pay taxes, including Social Security taxes, from which they will never benefit. They are setting down roots and having children who are U.S. citizens. However, because of their vulnerable immigration status, they live in shadow and fear, unable and afraid to seek protection of their human rights and their rights as workers.
[...]
The meat and poultry industry reflects the dynamic of swelling immigration into low-wage, hazardous-work labor markets. Meat and poultry processing plants have to contend with rapid turnover in their workforces.[298] Many new employees leave in the first days or weeks on the job, unable to cope with the pace and conditions of meat and poultry slaughtering work.
Employers need a constant stream of new applicants. “The company pays us a bounty of two hundred dollars for a worker we recommend who stays at least three months,” said one worker.[299] The three-month condition reflects a fact of meatpacking life: most of the high turnover phenomenon in the industry occurs in the first weeks of employment when workers react with their feet to the shock of working conditions in a plant, and decide to look for jobs in housekeeping, restaurants, or construction.
--
VII.
Immigrant Workers in the Meat and Poultry Industry
hrw.org -- Human Rights Watch
Industrial-Chicken-Coop -- from Wikimedia Commons
What a Thankless Job -- but "somebody" has got to do it. And for the right price too ...
Right!?
The next time you have a healthy affordable Salad to go along with those Fries -- Thank a Migrant Worker.
Well, because without them ...
Georgia’s New Immigration Law Leading To Crops Rotting In Farmers’ Fields
by Doug Mataconis, outsidethebeltway.com -- June 22, 2011
During the last legislative session, Georgia adopted a harsh new immigration law modeled on the law passed last year by Arizona. Now, it seems they’re getting a little lesson in the law of unintended consequences:
[...]
Thanks to the resulting labor shortage, Georgia farmers have been forced to leave millions of dollars’ worth of blueberries, onions, melons and other crops unharvested and rotting in the fields. It has also put state officials into something of a panic at the damage they’ve done to Georgia’s largest industry.
[...]
Adam Ozimek [...] explains the rather elementary economics behind what’s happening:
It goes like this. If you’re not going to let illegal immigrants do the jobs they are currently being hired to do, then farmers will have to raise wages to replace them. Since farmers are taking a risk in hiring immigrant workers, you can bet they were getting a significant deal on wage costs relative to “market wages”. I put market wages here in quotations, because it’s quite possible that the wages required to get workers to do the job are so high that it’s no longer profitable for farmers to plant the crops in the first place.
[...]
Those Tomatoes aren't going to pick themselves, now are they?
Hydroponic Tomatoes -- from Wikimedia Commons
Who needs fresh Tomatoes anyways?
Alabama Immigration Law Causing Produce To Rot In The Fields
by Doug Mataconis, outsidethebeltway.com -- October 6, 2011
Alabama’s tomato farmers are experiencing some of the same problems that Georgia farmers did earlier this year thanks to Alabama’s tough new immigration law, but the author of the law says he’s not willing to change it:
A sponsor of Alabama’s tough new immigration law told desperate tomato farmers Monday that he won’t change the law, even though they told him that their crops are rotting in the field and they are at risk of losing their farms.
Republican state Sen. Scott Beason of Gardendale met with about 50 growers, workers, brokers and business people Monday at a tomato packing shed on Chandler Mountain in northeast Alabama. They complained that the new law, which went into effect Thursday, scared off many of their migrant workers at harvest time.
[...]
[...] Standing outside in the hot sun, bending over, and picking tomatoes, onions, or cabbage isn’t fun to say the least and doing it for eight or nine hours a day, five or six days a week, is physically and mentally exhausting. There are people out there who are willing to do this work, though. So willing that they’re willing to take the risks of immigrating and living under the radar just for the privilege of starting a life in the United States of America.
[...]
There is an alternative to all of this, and it involves creating the kind of Guest Worker program that President Bush was talking about when comprehensive immigration reform was last being debated in Congress. Such a program would allow farmers to have access to the labor that they need, and do so in an environment where the workers are here legally, and paying taxes, rather than forcing everyone to do business in the shadows and under the table. Unfortunately, the Republican shot down immigration reform back then, and any prospect of such reform being passed any time soon is pretty dim given the current climate inside the GOP on the issue.
[...]
The next time you talk to a Republican puritan, ranting about "all those selfish 'illegals' stealing our American Jobs" -- Ask them
What did they have for Dinner?
Then ask them if it was affordable. Ask them if they want to keep it that way.
Then quietly suggest that they might want to Thank a Migrant Worker, instead of cursing them.
Thank them for helping to make their "affordable" standard of living ... even possible. Because as we found in the GOP hard-line experiments in Alabama and Georgia -- Americans don't want to do those back-breaking, dangerous "American Jobs" -- for what amount to less than peanuts.
Would you?