Blog 21: Summary and Response to "The New Industrial Migrants"

Part I

                “The new industrial migrants” article from the Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser is an article about immigrants working meatpacking jobs. in part I of the article Schlosser gives us a comparison of what meatpacking jobs use to offer to their workers, which was life on a middle-class level and what they offer now, which is a little more than poverty wages. Schlosser also mentions that at the Greeley beef plant workers quit or got fired every three months. The annual turnover rate at that plant, with hiring five thousand people during eighteen months, was four hundred percent. According to the author, today two-thirds of the workers at the Greeley plant are Mexican immigrants that do not speak English. They usually live in old trailers near the slaughterhouse or share rooms in old motels. Workers get paid $9.25 per hour and are offered health insurance after six months and a vacation pay after a year (most workers will never receive said vacation). Now the annual turnover at Greeley is around eighty percent (decline from 400% in 1990s). Schlosser than writes about a different slaughterhouse - ConAgra Red Meat. He mentions Mike Coan, who in 1994 was the safety director in ConAgra Red Meat. Their annual turnover was a hundred percent. Lastly, Schlosser talks about IBP and their annual turnover. Arden Walker – the head of labor relations at IBP, when asked by a Counsel if he was bothered with the turnover, during a federal hearing in the 1980s, answered – “Not really” and continued with a explanation “we found very little correlation between turnover and profitability” (correlation - coefficient measures the degree to which two things vary together). Schlosser finishes his article by saying: “a high turnover rate in the meatpacking industry – as in the fast food industry – also helps maintain a workforce that is harder to unionize and much easier to control”.


Par II

                In part II of his article “The new industrial migrants” Schlosser writes about the advantages for the employers from hiring illegal immigrants and disadvantages for the illegal immigrants from working in meatpacking firms.  IBP was one of the first companies to realize that immigrants would work for less money than American Citizens and that they would be more hesitant to join unions. Hiring immigrants was such an advantage for IBP that they would group their workers from poor communities throughout United States, even homeless people, and if they were located thousands of miles away the company would send buses to pick them up. According to the Immigration and Naturalization Service in Iowa and Nebraska illegal immigrants represent one quarter of all meatpacking workers and yet a spokesmen for IBP and the ConAgra Beef Company denies hiring immigrants on purpose saying - “We do not knowingly hire undocumented workers” and that “IBP supports INS efforts to enforce the law and do[es] not want to employ people who are not authorized to work in the United States”. Than Schlosser writes how of GFI America, Inc. tricked and misled their workers. GFI hired thirty-nine people from Texas to work in Minnesota. The company had promised them apartment housing when in reality the recruits were suppose to stay in a in People Serving People, a homeless shelter. Most recruits refused to stay in the shelter. Schlosser finishes by writing about how angry the advocates of that homeless shelter were when bribed by GFI. This was their reaction - "Our job is not to provide subsidies to corporations that are importing low-cost labor".

Response

                Eric Schlosser in his article “The new industrial migrants” (part I and part II) talks about the annual rates of turnovers in meatpacking industries and the advantages theses industries have from hiring illegal immigrants. I agree that turnovers and hiring immigrants might be good for the companies themselves, but what about the workers?!

Turnovers stand for how long an employee stays on a job. Schlosser mentions in his article, the head of labor relations at IBP Adren Walker, who says he is not worried about the company’s annual turnover rate since there is “very little correlation between turnovers and profitability”.

With hiring new employees after a short amount of time, big companies avoid paying their insurance fees or vacation time, since these mainly apply after six months or more. To the companies that is nothing but pure profit since they do manage to keep their job positions filled. In today's economy companies have an even bigger advantage do to the excess number of people that are unemployed.

My dad for instance works in construction, he’s a carpenter. He hasn’t had a steady job for a while now. Every at least three or four months he ends up unemployed. There are so many unemployed workers, that the owners of the companies literally can pick and choose who to hire and let them go without giving them any benefits.

                Schlosser also writes in his article about illegal immigrants being cheaper to maintain by big companies and that they would less likely join unions. I am from Poland and ever since I can remember America has been introduced to me as the great escape for a bright future. Everybody always said that in America there are well paying jobs for everyone. When I was young I didn’t really know that you have to be authorized to work in the United States, so yes I did believe whatever I had heard. When I came to America I realized that whatever all the beautiful things I heard before weren’t at all true. From what I know from living in Greenpoint (a Polish neighborhood) for a little while, is that most of the men work in construction and women clean houses, apartments or offices. Both men and women work for minimal wages, since they don’t have proper papers for employment in the US.

            My friend’s aunt and uncle have been here in NY illegally for the past 15 years. He used to work in construction until he had a terrible accident at work and now can barely walk and the aunt ever since she came here worked in Williamsburg, cleaning Jewish homes. She works almost fourteen hour days. When she gets home she is extremely exhausted and yet she still has to cook, clean etc., to help out her husband. Life for them hasn’t been easy but it is still better than the life they would have had if they were back in Poland. 

            In conclusion, big companies care only for their profits. They use illegal immigrants to save money they would have to pay to hire American Citizens. Immigrants on the other hand, even if they know that they do not get paid the money they really do deserve for their long hours of hard work, still rather stay here in United States than struggle even more in their home countries.