Lugares

¿Qué es lo que atrae miles de gente a la fábrica de carne para mover sus familias enteras a un área nueva? Aparte de dinero, apenas no sabemos. Las condiciones de trabajo en la fábrica de carne son horripilantes. Hay un sitio web fenomenal con mucha información valiosa acerca de lo que pasa verdaderamente en esas plantas. Aquí están algunas citas directas de ese sitio

"Giant meat-packing plants shape life in the small northwest Iowa town of Storm Lake. Unemployment among the 10,000 people who live here is only 2 percent. And nearly every family has someone working at either Iowa Beef Processors (IBP) [now known as Tyson Foods] or Sara Lee's Bil-Mar turkey plant. These plants provide nearly 75 percent of the area's manufacturing jobs."

"In the last 10 years, three groups of immigrants have arrived to work in Storm Lake's meat-packing plants: Refugees from Laos, a small influx of Mennonites from Mexico, and more recently hundreds of workers from Mexico. In 1982 there were only 28 non-English-speaking students in Storm Lake schools. By 1996 the fall kindergarten class was 47 percent "non-Caucasian"--students speaking Spanish, Tai Dam, Lao, Cambodian [Khmer], German, Korean, Chinese, and other non-English languages."

"In Storm Lake Latino and Laotian immigrants mainly stay out of the all-white downtown area where they don't feel welcomed. And they restrict their shopping to the Wal-Mart and Hy-Vee supermarket on the town's outskirts. One Latino community worker in Storm Lake put it, 'Race determines everything here. Where you live, where you work, how much you earn, where you worship, even where you shop.'"

"Meatpacking is a $94 billion-a-year business and more than half of the beef and pork industry is dominated by just three companies: IBP, Cargill's Excel Corp. and Con-Agra's Monfort Inc. The Big Three control 80 percent of all beef production alone and are continuing to expand."

"And according to Mark Grey, an anthropologist at the University of Northern Iowa who is an expert on the restructured packing industry, 'Food processing in America today would collapse were it not for immigrant labor.'"

"'Living here is like living on the moon. Our people don't know the law, their rights or where to go when they are sick. We work, we pay taxes and we have problems like everyone else. But there isn't a single person in the government who speaks our language.'"
-Rev. Tom Lo Van

"In 1992-93, IBP [Tyson Foods] recruited 70 people to come to Storm Lake from Mexico. IBP hired a Texas-based recruiter familiar with the Mennonite community in Mexico to approach men in settlements in the Chihuahau Province, tell them about jobs in Storm Lake, and assist them in getting immigration papers. These first immigrants to come from Mexico were a diverse group in terms of language, citizenship and nationality. For example, in one family the father had Mexican citizenship, the mother was Canadian, and the children were Mexican or American citizens. The adults usually spoke German and the children also spoke Spanish and/or English.

After this, IBP continued to recruit workers more broadly in Mexico, as well as in Texas and Southern California. Today, IBP relies on dozens of small towns in Mexico to supply them with a steady stream of low-wage labor. And like with the Laotian workers, they offer their Mexican employees a $150 bonus to recruit people from Mexico to come work in Storm Lake.

Workers now talk about a kind of underground railroad, stretching from rural Mexico straight to America's heartland--a human pipeline that stretches some 2,000 miles between Storm Lake and small towns like Santa Rita, Mexico."

"Trucks loaded with hogs rumble through Storm Lake day and night. The beasts are herded into the plant where workers use a 300-volt prod to stun them, and then slit their throats. The carcasses are hung from their rear feet on a chain and bled and then travel through the plant, as workers cut away their parts with knives and electric saws. The 250-pound hogs are disassembled at the rate of about 1,200 per hour, or 16,000 to 18,000 per day on two eight-hour shifts. About one production worker is required for each 10 hogs slaughtered. The plant runs two shifts a day and a cleaning shift at night, six days a week."

"Mseatpacking has the highest injury rate of all U.S. industries--36 percent of the workers are seriously injured each year. Many workers suffer from repetitive-motion injuries, cuts and back injuries. And the actual rate of injury is probably even higher than statistics show because many immigrant workers don't report injuries because they are afraid they will lose their job.

Workers say the company "headhunts" injured workers--targeting them for dismissal or demeaning work. In 1987, one IBP plant was found to have kept two sets of injury logs. And while Latinos make up about a quarter of the work force at IBP and have the most dangerous jobs, Latino last names showed up on less than 5 percent of the worker comp claims filed between 1987 and 1995.

IBP workers are not eligible for the company health plan for their first six months on the job. After this, a worker is eligible for health coverage that covers 80 percent of cost. But many immigrant workers can't afford to pay even 20 percent of skyrocketing health costs.

Some workers end up working only a few months before they are injured, fired, or forced to quit. And the IBP plant in Storm Lake, which now has 1,200 workers, has an annual turnover rate of 83 percent!"

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"The local police chief in Storm Lake, along with the INS, had built up a database of some 600 suspected "illegal aliens." Then on May 10, 1996:

Armed Border Patrol officers, backed by agents from the Immigration and Naturalization Service and units from local law enforcement, sealed off the perimeter of the IBP plant. A surveillance plane circled overhead. Inside, workers were summoned to the building's cafeteria. Sixty-four undocumented workers were arrested. All were Mexican immigrants, except a Guatemalan and a Honduran worker. The next week local police and the state highway patrol arrested 14 more immigrants after doing door-to-door searches, setting up roadblocks and stopping all cars with Latino occupants.

The whole town became an immigration checkpoint for anyone Latino. One Native American was asked for her documents at a grocery store. People started calling each other to report on which neighborhoods were being invaded by the INS. Police used chalk to mark the houses of suspected "illegals." And some of the white people in Storm Lake hid their Latino friends.

Most arrested immigrants were immediately deported."

Estos son las condiciones de trabajo de los trabajadores de la fábrica de carne. Ellos son horas largas, y el trabajo son algunos de trabajo más peligroso fuera allí. Si cualquiera de los trabajadores se hiere, entonces ellos pierden su trabajo y su habilidad de sostener su familia. Las correrías de la Migra en la planta son también una amenaza constante a los inmigrantes illigales que trabajan en la planta. Los inmigrantes no tienen ningún poder en la planta. Ellos están en los caprichos de sus jefes, porque si ellos son subordinados en cualquier manera, sus jefes los podrían entregar al gobierno. Por eso, ellos cierran las bocas y hacen el trabajo increíblemente difícil por muy poco lana.

Tyson Foods

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