A majority of the workers in meat packing plants are immigrants, both legal and undocumented. They work in the state’s only chicken processing plant in Moorefield, West Virginia. In Storm Lake, Iowa, they work in plants that process turkey and hogs.
The Work Ain’t Pretty. It’s dirty, smelly and dangerous!
During the early days of the pandemic, the share of foreign-born meatpacking workers was 45.4%—28 percentage points higher than the average share for all industries combined. From 2017 to 2021, the number of unique online job postings for meatpacking workers increased by 86.4%.
The work is hard and dangerous. In Storm Lake, the workers who often are almost elbow to elbow on the lines were refused safety equipment during COVID, and Tyson insisted people come to work. They didn’t test despite more than 1400 infections, and now some lawsuits await Iowa Supreme Court decisions. Iowa’s Governor Kim Reynolds stood with the plants and required them to stay open — just precisely what now former-president Trump demanded.
Since COVID, the need for workers has been more severe than usual, so Storm Lake’s plants started hiring underage kids to clean the plants at night. Cleaning plants is dangerous. There are saws to clean, strong chemicals to use, ladders to climb, and much more. Governor Reynolds and the Republican supermajority passed a law that pushed the age of kid-workers down so the plants would stop getting into trouble.
It’s not just Iowa; it’s West Virginia and Every Other State with Packing Plants!
Immigrant workers also run Pilgrim’s Pride Moorefield chicken factory. They get the most dangerous jobs and are treated as disposable. The trips to the hospital don’t always show up on the injury lists, and Pilgrim’s Pride, an arm of the largest poultry producer in the world, refuses to answer journalist queries or be accountable for the many dangers. For example, the circular saw goes without shields.
It is an open secret that many of the workers are undocumented, whether working in Iowa, West Virginia, or the many other states with packing plants. Often, these jobs are the first jobs the workers get; English is not required, and for those who speak/understand no English, the dangers at work are increased just as worker safety rules decrease and are not enforced.
The work is dangerous, but traveling to get a job is risky, too. Fifty-three migrants, including a pregnant woman and eight children, died when locked in a tractor-trailer by smugglers in San Antonio. Fifteen smuggled workers were trapped in another trailer in Texas. Other smuggled workers were killed when trapped in a boxcar in Arizona.
Trump Intends to Use U.S. Military to Hunt Down, Capture, and Deport Workers.
Trump has promised to deport 15-20 million immigrants who may or may not be undocumented and are working in the U.S. They take the lowest jobs that few established Americans are willing to do.
We need these people working. We depend upon them whenever we go to the grocery store, but it’s not just agriculture that relies on these workers. It’s also daycare, educational, and healthcare services that depend on them. The workers who died while fixing potholes on Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed were immigrants. Many of us own houses built by immigrants. They are building America just like our grandparents and great-grandparents—the original immigrants—did. We owe them.
Trump wants to deport 15-20 million people. Trump intends to use the American military to jerk these hard-working people out of their jobs, the jobs most established Americans will not do. And for the first time in modern history, Trump intends to use the U.S. military to go after them, to “throw” them out of the country.
The Posse Comitatus Act is a United States federal law (18 U.S.C. § 1385, original at 20 Stat. 152) signed on June 18, 1878, by President Rutherford B. Hayes which limits the powers of the federal government in the use of federal military personnel to enforce domestic policies within the United States. (Wikipedia)
Will Trump defy this law, too? How many laws does Trump have to break before we hold him accountable?