AlterNet: Would You Work the Graveyard Shift at a Chicken Slaughterhouse in Alabama?

[marmar]

AlterNet / By Bill Berkowitz

Would You Work the Graveyard Shift at a Chicken Slaughterhouse in Alabama?
A new book tells the story of how one New York-based journalist embedded himself in the backbreaking work routinely performed by immigrant laborers.

February 1, 2010 |


"Have you ever wondered why poultry plant workers don't hang their plastic smocks outside on a line to dry after a shift spent covered in chicken juice and meat?" Gabriel Thompson asked in a recent e-mail. "The answer: red ants."

Thompson found this out "ten minutes into a new shift when felt a bite, and then another, and another, and looked down to see red ants swarming around my chest, stomach, arms, and other places, too. Evidently," Thompson pointed out, "red ants are attracted to the stench of dead chickens."

Following in the tradition of journalists thoroughly embedding themselves in their reporting -- think John Howard Griffin, a white man who in the 1960s spent six weeks busing around the South passing as a black man, or Barbara Ehrenreich who spent several months being "nickeled and dimed" as she worked an assortment of service sector jobs around the country -- Gabriel Thompson took to the road last year to work mostly alongside Latino immigrant workers. His forthcoming book, Working in the Shadows: A Year of Doing the Jobs Americans Won't Do (Nation Books), tells the story of not only his personal experiences, but the realities of immigrant workers that traded economic deprivation and/or political oppression of their homelands for America's elusive promises.

Thompson did the kind of backbreaking work that most Americans wouldn't think of doing. In a recent e-mail, Thompson wrote that "He stooped over lettuce fields in Arizona … worked the graveyard shift at a chicken slaughterhouse in rural Alabama, … dodged taxis … as a bicycle delivery 'boy' for an upscale Manhattan restaurant, and was fired from a flower shop by a boss who, he quickly realized, was nuts." ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/rights/145450/would_you_work_the_graveyard_shift_at_a_chicken_slaughterhouse_in_alabama

[lazarus]

1. I did

worked at a chicken plant for years, in rural Alabama. Not bad work, at least my job. I didn't have to work the line much, though. I couldn't have handled that. It's mind-numbing work. Think Metropolis: The machines run you, not the other way around.

For a lot of people, it's considered a good job, because (at least at the plant where I worked) you could get benefits. Yeah, you were only making 6 or 7 dollars an hour, but you had health insurance.

And in an area where you could get a decent one bedroom apartment for under $200/month, $7/hr was doable.

[Solly Mack]

2. I have worked at one

K&R

[kirby]

4. No you didn't

The article clearly states that these are jobs that Americans will not do.

[Solly Mack]

5. A lot of Americans wouldn't

No sense in pretending otherwise. When I worked at it, many, many, many Americans told me they would never do it and didn't see how I could.

[HillbillyBob]

3. I worked construction, restaurants, ditch digging, lawn service,

sometimes doing many of those same jobs overlapping since the paygrade and job stability are so low as to be nonexistant. The OJT attempts of murdering me was jsut the last straw.
I found out the hard way I am very allergic to fire ants, and w/o health insurance i nearly died from it.

I will never visit nazibama again, forget living (livin death for gays) there again.