Blog Entry 19

“The New Industrial Migrants”

Summarizing Part l

      According to the passage “The New Industrial Migrants” from Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser, it is stated that since 1980s people from Mexico, Central America and South Asia started to come to the United States to the rural area of Colorado, where meatpacking jobs where offered. Even though that type of jobs were once for middle- class American life now they offer poverty. The slaughterhouse offers thousands of jobs, but they continually have people quitting or being fired. Currently, 75 percent of people working at the plant in Greeley don’t speak English and mostly of them are Mexicans who live in the poorest areas close to the slaughterhouse. The slaughterhouse pays $9.25 per hour, a third lower than forty year ago. In addition they only offer health insurance to workers who have been there more than six months, and vacation pay after a year. However, most of the workers don’t get any of them since the average of quitting and being fired is every three months. ”There is 100 percent turnover rate annually” Mike Coan said during a 1994 interview with Business Insurance, an industry trade journal, and he added that “…in some plants maybe a third of people cannot read or write any language.” In 1980s, Arden Walker explained some of the “advantages” of the high turnover. He said, “…insurance, as you know, is very costly. Insurance is not available to new employees until they’ve worked there for a period of a year or, in some cases, six months. Vacations don’t accrue until the second year. There are some economies, frankly, that result from hiring new employees.” Meatpacking turnover makes difficult to maintain the work force unionize.

Part ll

      IBP Company started to recruit migrant labor and it was one of the first companies to recognize that new immigrant would work for lower salaries. This company has recruited poor people in the country among them homeless from New York. Currently, IBP has a labor office in Mexico City, where it makes announcements by radio stations offering jobs in the United States. They bring all the recruited people by bus from rural areas in Mexico to the US. The Immigration and Naturalization Service [INS] estimates that the 25 percent of the meatpacking workers in states like Iowa and Nebraska are illegal. IBP refuse that they were hiring or looking illegal immigrants but they also say that there are no American people who would take that type of job. Moreover immigrant or poor people health insurance would be on very low-cost, so slaughterhouses such as IBP take advantage of it.

My Response

      In the passage “The New Industrial Immigrants” by Eric Schlosser from Fast Food Nation, it is stated that people from Mexico, Central America, and South Asia are coming the United States since 1980’s in order to work in slaughterhouses and most of them don’t speak English or worse don’t write any language. There’s 400 percent of turnover in the slaughterhouses due to the bad conditions. Moreover, meatpacking companies such as IBP are taking advantage of this phenomenon arguing that healthcare insurance, annual vacation and salaries would be on very low-cost for new immigrants and especially those who are illegal. Immigrants are easy to convince about false promises due to their economical needs and lack of education.

      It’s well known that immigrants leave their countries hopping to find a better life style and future for them and their families. Unfortunately, Latin American and South Asian countries don’t offer jobs to their people, due to corruption on those governments. Once they arrived here to the United States, they have to tolerate severe condition of living. For example, six people living in a room that it is suppose to be for two maximum so that they can save money and send that to their families. They go to work, even when they sick. These people would anything if they can save money and go back to their countries sooner. However, there are unbearable conditions to work such as meatpacking at slaughterhouses where the high quantity of toxins that the manure releases can bring side effects including asthma and cancer that make those people quit.

      IBP Company has been recruiting people not only around the country but also in Mexico promising a place to live, good salary, annual vacation and healthcare insurance. However these promises never come true, the reason could be that people quit within three months and these benefits start to accrue after a year. In addition most of the workers don’t speak English or write any language. Therefore, they can’t complain, all they want is a job. Moreover these people are illegal, so they feel afraid to be deported. Because of their lack of education, they don’t demand jobs to the government in their countries and when they come here they don’t demand anything due to their lack of English and documents.

      In brief, slaughterhouses should be strictly regulated so the condition of their premises would be good and at the same time employees should count with all their benefits since the first moment they star to work there.