By Barb Shelly, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist
Ana Cecilia Arguello’s immigration status tripped her up when federal officials raided the Agriprocessors Inc. meat-processing plant in Postville, Iowa.
She’s a Guatemalan citizen who used fake papers to get her $6.25-cent-an-hour job more than two years ago.
She was 15 years old.
Arguello told reporters from The Des Moines Register that she worked 12-hour shifts, six days a week weighing, labeling and sometimes boning chicken parts. Now 17, she has never attended school.
She is one of at least 57 underage employees at the kosher meat-processing plant, according to the Iowa labor commissioner, who has asked the state attorney general to bring criminal charges against Agriprocessors. The company says it didn’t knowingly hire children, and has cooperated with the state’s inquiry.
Rumors of child labor law violations at the Agriprocessors plant have circulated for years in the town and around the industry. But they weren’t the reason federal enforcers came to Postville.
No. In a demonstration of misplaced priorities, officials moved into town to round up undocumented workers. The arrests of 389 illegal immigrants on May 15 marked the biggest single-site immigration bust in U.S. history.
If you’re a federal official wanting to look tough on illegal immigration, a food processing plant is the place to go. Meat packing is hard, nasty work. It pays about 25 percent less than the average manufacturing wage. Hours are long, injuries are frequent and only people with limited options will put up with the conditions for very long.
Sad to say, political pressure to “crack down” on undocumented immigrants isn’t matched by the will to improve safety and working conditions at the plants.
“A variety of (government) agencies have oversight,” said Donald Stull, professor of anthropology at the University of Kansas. “None of them exercise it very diligently, in my opinion. We’ve seen a movement over a long period of time to privatize government responsibilities and to give meatpacking the responsibility to regulate itself.”
Since the 1960’s, America’s meat processors have set up shop in empty stretches of states like Kansas and Iowa, far from the meddlesome reach of a muckraking media or powerful unions.
The nation has struck an unspoken bargain with the industry: Give us cheap meat and we won’t ask questions.
Child labor wasn’t supposed to be part of the bargain, but bad things happen when no one is looking. Investigators say children as young as 14 were found on the production lines at Agriprocessors, working shifts that could last as long as 17 hours.
Immigrant labor, legal and otherwise, is very much a part of the bargain, whether or not we want to admit it. Making meat-processing jobs palatable to U.S. citizens would require oversight and drive up costs.
“We don’t want to take the steps that will change the industry,” Stull said.
The KU anthropologist has spend 20 years visiting food-processing plants and talking with workers in meat-packing towns.
Reforming the industry is no mystery, he said.
If meat packing is to become something other than a workplace of last resort, it must offer better pay and more training.
Companies must make health benefits available at the start of employment, instead of six months into the job.
The plants should allow workers to rotate tasks, to cut down on repetitive motion injuries.
Most important, employers must slow down the production lines, to reduce risk of injury and worker stress.
“It would involve an epiphany on the part of the industry,” Stull said. “It would increase the price of our meat a little bit, but I don’t think that much.”
Undocumented workers at meat-packing plants aren’t the problem. Low pay, harsh working conditions and lax oversight are the problems. Fix the industry, and the workforce issue will take care of itself.
Barbara Shelly is a member of the editorial board. She can be reached at 816-234-4594 or at . She blogs at voices.kansascity.com.
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Yes, they are the problem!
It's ridiculous to suggest that illegal aliens, or unconstrained immigration aren't the problem!
Overpopulation, congestion, urban sprawl, diminishing resources, crumbling infrastructure, overcorwded schools and emergency rooms, lack of affordable housing, crime, pollution, vanishing farm land and green space, depressed wages, increased tax burdens, the balkanization of our communities, the marginalization of American Citizens, taxpayers and voters, the overall decline in quality of life, are all the result of unconstrained immigration! To many people competing for the same limited resources cannot be considered sound economic, environmental, social or cultural policy!
I am outraged that the illegals themselve are filing lawsuits for the crimes they should be punished for. The key to solving the problem of illegal immigration is to severely sanction employers who hire illegal aliens, and to put an end to the jobs and benefits magnet that draws these self serving opportunists into our country. We cannot mitigate the effects of illegal immigration if we allow the illegal aliens to remain in our nation. For any of our laws to work, their must be consequences for actions. Doubtless deportations are expensive, but some of these costs can be recovered or at least offset by using asset forfeiture to fund the process. Indeed, the prospect of losing their "ill-gotten gains" might induce more illegal aliens to "self deport"! Certainly the costs of deportation are substantially lower than the ongoing costs to taxpayers of sustaining millions of illegal alien residents?
We must clean house....NOW!
Until we enact the Federal SAVE ACT (H.R.4088) enforcement only law, this kind of problem will keep raising its ugly head. More enforcement is all it will take, against predatory employers, who now realize that ICE is getting tip from regular AMERICANS? As more and more counties give immigration training to police departments on the Fed's dime. So the chances of being found out, that the businesses is using cheap labor is becoming an everyday occurrence. Of course we certainly need more ICE, US Border Patrol and specialized military equipment to make the immigration sweeps. The SAVE ACT(H.R.4088) will consummate this marriage of ICE and State, County and community illegal immigrant policing.
But Democrats are looking for millions of votes in the future and therefore genuflecting to the Latino caucuses, along with Globalists, business, church and other open border advocates We need strong government laws, instead the organized chaos of individual state laws, because the Democrats refuse to enforce the laws already on the books. More funding! Compared with what taxpayers are spending now, which is well hidden? It will be PENNIES! Rep. Menendez is trying to derail the only 'Iron Gauntlet' law that we have now. Including deconstructing the original border fence. Without extra funding, the SAVE ACT will die and we will be exposed to millions of more illegal entrants, as well as drug smuggler, gun runners, terrorists and third world criminals who prey on US victims.
The E-verify system. If it doesn't become law by November, American citizens will be in competition with millions of more illegal cheap labor for jobs and growing OVERPOPULATION. Go to NUMBERSUSA, CAPSWEB to free fax and demand the Federal SAVE ACT!
Beg to Differ...
... yes, they are the problem because they will do the work for less money and in horrendous conditions. Eliminate that available pool of workers and conditions and wages will have to get better. These workers are the problem and can never be part of the solution.