WaPo-- Southern chicken plants created the immigrant work force...

[TreasonousBastard]

And it all started because...

The roots of the heavily Latino workforces in Southern poultry plants lie in the growing American appetite for chicken during the 1990s, and the stirrings of a labor movement by African American plant workers. As poultry production expanded, workers’ pay and opportunities remained stagnant. As a result, labor organizing among the plants’ predominantly African American workforce began to gain traction.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/08/09/poultry-industry-recruited-them-now-ice-raids-are-devastating-their-communities/

If you get hit with a paywall (or just can't be bothered to click the link) the story is that they started going down to Miami to recruit Cubans. Then other South and Central Americans. It was working so well that they expanded and formalized the "program" even going to the extent of offering rewards for bringing new blood into the program.

It is well worth the read.

[CottonBear]

1. Gainesville , GA is a massive Chicken Processing location

with a huge Latino population. It all happened in the 1990s.

[yardwork]

2. The author of the column, Angela Stuesse, is a researcher who wrote a book on this.

Angela Stuesse is a cultural anthropologist at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. To learn more about immigrant and U.S.-born workers in Mississippi’s poultry industry, pick up her book, "Scratching Out a Living: Latinos, Race, and Work in the Deep South."

[pwb]

3. Overt executive crime that as usual will go unpunished.

Guess the, we didn't know, excuse is done for them. All employers of these desperate migrants should go to jail right next to the arrested. Money will not protect these people any longer. The Epstein and Trump types are exposed just like the pukes, Fake tough perverts.

[TreasonousBastard]

4. They should, and some are, but it's just not that easy...

Just posted tjis av few minutes ago:

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100212366044

[Ferrets are Cool]

5. I have said for years that the feds should go after the CEO's not the workers...

you put CEO's in prison for breaking the law and it would stop. Abruptly.

[Farmer-Rick]

6. And this scam seems to have wiped out

Poultry slaughter houses for small farmers. I have to drive 3 hours one way to another state to find a subsidized, under a pilot program thru the Agriculture Dept., poultry slaughter house. I process about 100 birds a year and there aren't any places that will process them. Larger animals from sheep to beef can easily be processed in one of 3 slaughter houses around here...within a 30 min drive. But Not poultry.

You get all sorts of excuses from the slaughter houses but the bottom line is they are only processing chickens for corporations.

[mountain grammy]

7. In the early 90's as a member of OCAW

I remember the organizing efforts of other unions, especially after a deadly fire in one of the plants where the exit doors were chained shut. The worker then were almost all African Americans. The efforts stalled. Now I know why.

[JohnnyRingo]

8. It's an alternative to outsourcing.

When it's inconvenient or impossible to outsource a job to a third world country, they bring the workers here. These companies would pay better wages if huge fines cancelled the amount they save using undoc'd workers.

"Jobs Americans are unwilling to do" would go away if companies were willing to pay a decent wage.

[Hortensis]

9. Our deep-red county in Georgia has a substantial

chicken industry and a substantial Hispanic population.

The story of the exploitation and degradation of once-independent business owners who used to be a proud and productive part of this industry is another good one. Once-independent chicken farmers who raised and provided chickens to processors, who had their own responsibilities and made their own decisions, now are more like line workers in a production chain and workers trapped in company towns in terms of power and independence. THE choice is to contract with the company to perform some small step of the production, rigidly adhering to instructions provided and using the materials required, for the terms offered. Or nothing.