Tennessee Locals Wait All Night, Compete Against Immigrants for Slaughterhouse Jobs (WSJ)

[tj2001]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124303310871748603.html

May 23, 2009
Job Fight: Immigrants vs. Locals
Tennessee Residents Compete for Work They Once Scorned; An All-Night Wait for Slaughterhouse Shifts
By MIRIAM JORDAN

SHELBYVILLE, Tenn. -- Hard times recently drew scores of locals and immigrants to a cold sidewalk in this town, where they spent an anxious night waiting to compete for jobs in a slaughterhouse.

Burmese refugee Cho Aye traveled 60 miles from Nashville on a Thursday morning in late March to take a place at the head of the line outside Shelbyville's state employment office. The next day, the office was to take applications for $9.35-an-hour jobs processing chicken at the local Tyson Foods plant. Directly behind Ms. Aye, sitting on blankets atop the concrete, were 16 more Burmese refugees who had come from as far away as Idaho and Florida. "I don't mind doing any kind of work," Ms. Aye, a petite 22-year-old, said that evening as she settled into a reclining beach chair she bought at Goodwill.

Farther back in the line, marked by orange tape and monitored by police, locals like David Curtis seethed. "This is the worst job I have ever applied for," said the 31-year-old welder, who had already failed to find work at a convenience store, a pen factory and a Pizza Hut. Eyeing those ahead of him, he added: "I'm very annoyed foreigners are taking jobs that Americans need."

Slaughterhouse jobs can be difficult and dangerous. Now, with U.S. unemployment at a 25-year high, they are also fiercely coveted. American workers -- who for years have largely avoided fruit-picking, office-cleaning and meat-processing shifts -- are increasingly vying for these jobs with immigrants, creating flashpoints in places like Shelbyville.

The rising friction has been on display at the employment center here. When Tyson put out an earlier call for applications, in February, shoving and cursing broke out between locals and immigrants jockeying for position at the head of the line. With too few jobs to go around, outraged locals demanded that the work go to residents, not immigrant workers from outside Shelbyville. "The despair is new," says employment-center worker James Cupp. "People need jobs." ....

[OmahaBlueDog]

1. I remember just a few months ago slaughter facilities in Nebraska were screaming for workers

Swift in Grand Island ran radio advertising to fill slots, and said that they offered training and starting pay of $24K and benefits.

[47of74]

2. Thank you very much George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, Phil Gramm, James Leach...

et al.

[blue sky at night]

10. your point is well taken......

wondering how many of these good old boys voted the straight ticket all of their lives, and now that the chickens have come home to roost, they blame "foreigners" for their problems.

[Edweird]

11. Um, Memphis has been solidly blue for the quite some time.

Yes, it sucks there. Yes, I moved away as fast as I could. But the fact still remains that you don't know what you are talking about.

You can go here to educate yourself:
http://elections.nytimes.com/2008/results/president/map.html

Memphis is in the lower left corner of Tennessee. Shelbyville is nothing more than an industrial suburb on the south side of Memphis.

[imdjh]

3. it would be interesting to find out what their hiring strategy is.

You might think that they would hire the Burmese, because they might expect them to stay as long as they are needed. On the other hand, chicken processing is a nasty job that generates workers comp claims in long term employees, so they might hire people they expect to stay awhile, but not long enough to develop a health issue or disability claim.

[murielm99]

4. Maybe they will wake up and unionize those jobs,

creating safer working conditions and better pay.

[michreject]

9. Won't help

Some Democrats would then buy non union chickens imported from Asia. They would justify it by stating that they were made from American eggs.

[dflprincess]

5. Jobs at meat packing plants were not avoided by Americans until the unions were busted

Once upon a time the jobs with Hormel and Swift were considered good jobs in many Minnesota towns. With the unions gone the plants started back sliding toward what they were when Upton Sinclair wrote "The Jungle" - right down to them hiring immigrants (documented or not) because the powers that be think they're easier to abuse.

[Hannah Bell]

14. yep. sa thing is, a lot of young people probably don't even realize those used to be

"good jobs", or why they're not now.

[Hannah Bell]

6. remember when meat-packing jobs paid well & were highly regulated?

thanks to the reagan revolution, we revisit "the jungle".

[murielm99]

12. That's what I was thinking.

These could be union, well-paying jobs again. I remember a chicken packing plant that unionized when I was growing up.

The workers deserved good pay. Their jobs were hard. The owners of that plant were always trying to import illegal immigrants so they could pay them less. But the union stuck.

[Blue_Tires]

7. i get the feeling

the WSJ op-ed board gets all orgasmic seeing stories like this...

[JVS]

13. Yes. They really are scum of the earth. Great examples of Vrag Proletariata.

[annabanana]

8. There will be murder.

Sooner or later (surely sooner than we would wish) the desperation will will make murder seem logical.