Joel Dyer
The Fort Collins Weekly

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December 22, 2006
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Meatpacking industry has a long history of reliance on immigrant laborer

Greeley didn't always have a 30 percent Latino population. It didn't always have an elementary education system where more than half of the children are Latino. And Greeley didn't always have a slaughterhouse.

It now boasts all three, and it's no coincidence.

Not only can the transformation of much of northern Colorado's shifting demographics be traced to the Swift & Co. meatpacking plant in Greeley, it can be argued -- and has been by many scholars over the years -- that it has been a transformation by design, a design and realignment of a $100 billion industry specifically created to capitalize on high turnover and cheap migrant labor to increase profits. It's a ploy that has landed the meatpacking industry in the middle of America's now heated debate over immigration.

To understand the context of the ICE raids at Swift's Greeley plant earlier this month and the company's somewhat disingenuous insistence that it never knowingly hired illegal migrant laborers, we must look back.

The slaughterhouse has always been a place of blood and stench and danger. In the later half of the 19th century, most of the industry was localized. The butcher carved the meat for the locals who frequented the shop. Butchers were considered skilled craftsmen and compensated accordingly. But as America's population urbanized, a great industry was born. Following the invention of the refrigerated railcar in the 1860s, large packing houses sprang up in cities such as Chicago, Omaha and Kansas City to all America's seemingly unquenchable desire for beef.

As Upton Sinclair would later expose in his 1906 essay "The Jungle," working in the slaughterhouses is as hard and dangerous as it gets. Even in its infancy the meatpacking business was not a place wherein most Americans were willing to toil.

And so the industry turned to immigrants who were new to the country and desperate for work.

The original slaughterhouse immigrants were not from south of the border. In fact, Hispanics comprised only 1 percent of the meatpacking workforce in 1909. The majority of the industry's labor force was made up of newly arrived Polish and Lithuanian immigrants.

Over time, the demographics of the worker population shifted. By 1929, blacks, who had migrated in large numbers from the South during and following Word War I, comprised 29.5 percent of the industry's labor pool. They had become the largest segment of employees in the industry. Hispanic workers also grew in number within the industry following the war, but their numbers were still rather insignificant.

In 1920, for example, Swift employed only 97 Hispanic workers. According to a report prepared for Congress in October titled "Labor Practices in the Meat Packing and Poultry Processing Industry," Mexican workers began to appear in the meatpacking industry of the Midwest during World War I. The report notes, "The Mexican presence increased sharply. Most (workers) appear to have migrated from Mexico, rather than from other parts of the United States, having come north as agricultural or track laborers (railroad maintenance of way). After brief periods at such work (or in the steel mills), they migrated in the late 1920s to other industries, particularly to meatpacking."

By 1930, the number of Hispanics employed by Swift had grown to 217. But it would be 30 years before the real boom in Hispanic workers would hit the slaughterhouses, largely as a result of the labor unions' loss of power as well as consolidation and relocation within the industry.

The first attempt at unionizing the meatpacking industry occurred in 1894. Employees at the meatpacking plants walked off the job in sympathetic support of the Pullman Strike called by the American Railroad Union. The strike failed and the workers were replaced.

Similar failed attempts to unionize over the next two decades would create the first transformation of the meatpacking labor force. When the Eastern European workers who comprised most of the labor pool would strike, they were often replaced by blacks in an effort to break the union. During World War I, the demand for beef shot up and the draft took many workers from the plants.

This perfect storm of sorts sparked a mass migration northward by Southern blacks who at first were difficult for the unions to organize. Over time, the black work force eventually outgrew the European work force.


As a result of wages 25 percent higher than other manufacturing jobs, most meatpackers actually had waiting lists of people wanting jobs. It was not uncommon to find employees with 20-plus years employment at the same company. The idea that meatpacking was a job that most citizens would not do had been shattered by decades of organized labor gains. The children of meatpackers were going to college and often returning to the packing plants to work because the pay and benefits were so good. Meatpacking jobs had become a fast track to middle class living.

Apparently conditions were too good from the perspective of the companies. The first blow to union power was the rapid consolidation of the industry into the hands of only a few powerful corporations, a consolidation that continues today.

The 1950s and 60s created a new breed of meatpacking company. Slaughterhouses were bought and closed at a rapid rate until only a handful of companies were left in control of the industry. Since 1980, the number of cattle slaughterhouses has plummeted from more than 600 to 170.

Forty years ago, the largest four meatpackers controlled 21 percent of the industry. Today the top four, including Greeley-based Swift, controls 85 percent of the industry. These large companies have forced the unions to adopt a plant-by-plant negotiating strategy that has worked well to decrease the power of the unions. The companies have built redundant facilities that can simply increase production in the case of a strike at a similar plant.

For instance, Swift has virtually identical plants in Greeley, Grand Island, Neb., and Cactus, Texas. As a result, the unions have lost their primary bargaining chip.

The meatpacking companies' urban-to-rural relocation of the industry has also weakened the unions. It is estimated that more than three-quarters of the employees at some meatpacking facilities are not native English speakers. And with a turnover rate intentionally designed to hit 40 percent to 100 percent a year, it is actually a feat that the unions have even managed to stay in some of the plants considering they must find a whole new set of members nearly every year.

All of the above circumstances have worked to lessen the impact of organized labor within the meatpacking industry. But if there was ever one primary catalyst for the current widespread use of both legal and illegal Hispanic labor in the slaughterhouses, it was the creation of a company called Iowa Beef Processors (IBP) in 1960.

According to the October congressional report, "The emergence of IBP may have had the greatest impact upon the industry -- and, thus, upon workers. From its beginnings in the early 1960s, IBP appears to have made clear that it intended to operate, as nearly as possible, in a non-union environment and it developed a low-wage strategy. 'If we paid the base rate the union wants,' an IBP official reportedly stated, 'our whole program would fail.' "

IBP's strategy for success was simple. Move the packing industry out of the urban centers of Chicago, Kansas City and Omaha to more rural areas like Greeley. This urban-to-rural relocation served several purposes. It cut down on transportation costs by putting the slaughterhouses in the areas where most cattle are raised and it left the longtime union workers behind. Very few of the urban black and white workers followed their company's move west.

According to the IBP model, lower-cost local, rural labor would be tapped for the new plants. But as several industry observers have pointed out over the years, this was unrealistic from the beginning. Most of the communities that offered tax breaks and other incentives to land a plant had nowhere near the amount of labor to fill plants that often require between 2,000 and 3,000 employees. As a result the companies had to lure a new labor force to their rural packing houses, a largely Hispanic and often illegal labor force.

In one of the clearest examples of things to come, union workers went on strike at IBP's Dakota City, Neb., plant in 1969. IBP brought in Mexican workers to break the strike. They never left.

"In some American slaughterhouses, more than three-quarters of the workers are not native English speakers; many can't read any language, and many are illegal immigrants," wrote journalist Eric Schlosser in Mother Jones magazine in 2001. "A new migrant industrial workforce now circulates through the meatpacking towns of the High Plains. A wage of $9.50 an hour seems incredible to men and women who come from rural areas in Mexico where the wages are $7 a day. These manual laborers, long accustomed to toiling in the fields, are good workers.

"They're also unlikely to complain or challenge authority, to file lawsuits, organize unions or fight for their legal rights. They tend to be poor, vulnerable and fearful. From the industry's point of view, they are ideal workers: Cheap, largely interchangeable and disposable."

As a result of the success of the IBP model, by the early 1960s, nearly all slaughterhouse owners were forced to go west and thereby go Hispanic or go out of business. Monfort opened the Greeley facility -- now owned by Swift -- in 1960.

The town would never be the same.

"Consolidation and/or restructuring inevitably affects workers. Similarly, however justified in terms of efficiency, it also affects the communities from which a facility moves and into which it relocates."

--"Labor Practices in the Meat Packing and Poultry Processing Industry: An Overview," updated October 27, 2006 William G. Whittaker, specialist in Labor Economics Domestic Social Policy Division Immigration Crisis

In the new rural slaughterhouse, turnover has become a strategy to be encouraged as opposed to a negative business expense. An ever-changing Hispanic workforce decreases the power of organized labor and eliminates a substantial portion of health-care costs for the company.

For example, in March 1980, Monfort closed its Greeley plant, citing cost efficiency.

It rehired and reopened two years later without a union contract using a high percentage of Hispanic workers. By closing its plant and reopening without the union, Monfort cut its labor costs by 25 percent.

The 1980s produced similar efforts by nearly all of the meatpackers. As a result, the industry was able to cut its hourly wages by nearly half. What had once been the highest paying of all manufacturing jobs has, since 1984, been one of the lowest. What was once the most organized industry from the labor standpoint now has a mere 10 to 30 percent union membership in many plants.

According to several published government reports, meatpackers are increasingly recruiting Hispanic and other immigrants for their labor purposes. The reports speculate that such workers -- having few community ties, little knowledge of labor laws and often illegal status -- are ideal employees because they are unlikely to organize, report work place grievances or injuries, or seek long-term socioeconomic advancement through organization.

In other words, they tend to do what they are told and then move on. This disposable immigrant employee system is quite profitable. Most immigrant workers have left the company before annual bonuses or vacation time has been paid out. Most plants do not provide health care to workers for at least six months from the hiring date and sometimes up to a year. In an industry where it is estimated that as many as two-thirds of line workers are injured each year, high turnover saves millions in medical expenses.

The 2006 congressional report states, "In a carefully structured and highly competitive industry, high turnover may not be accidental. Some would argue that worker retention may be neither desirable nor profitable."

The report goes on to quote Mark Grey of the University of Northern Iowa:

"Ultimately, their concern is not about a stable workforce, but maintaining a transient work force."

This position that turnover may well be a desirable component of the meatpackers business model was confirmed in the 1984 testimony of Arden Walker, former head of labor relations for IBP, during a hearing of the National Labor Relations Board. The exchange was this:

NLRB: "With regard to turnover, since you are obviously experiencing it, does that bother you?"

Walker: "Not really".

NLRB: "Why not?"

Walker: "We found very little correlation between turnover and profitability. An employee leaves for whatever reason. Generally, we're able to have a replacement employee, and I might add that the way fringe benefits have been negotiated or installed, they favor long-term employees. For instance, 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."

The meatpacking industry is considered a "point of entry" job for new immigrants to the United States, whether legal or illegal. Couple that with a 40 to 100 percent turnover rate at a plant with a thousand or more employees and you can begin to see the machine that transforms communities such as Greeley, and even entire regions such as northern Colorado, in quick and substantial ways.

When informed by ICE that a raid was imminent at its plants two weeks ago, Swift immediately went before a judge to ask for an injunction to prevent those raids. On the Thursday before the raids, Swift told the court that the raids could severely impact its ability to conduct business because it feared it could lose up to 40 percent of its workforce, according to Swift's court documents. This estimate of workers lost seems counter to Swift's claims that it has never knowingly hired an illegal worker. If that were truly the company's belief, then why would it estimate a 40 percent loss in its workforce from an immigration raid?

By such an estimate, it is conceivable that as many as 1,000 Hispanic workers (both legal and illegal) are drawn to the Greeley facility each year for work only to leave their jobs within a few months, presumably for better work and pay elsewhere in the community. Multiply such a reality by 30 years and add family reunification into the formula and it becomes clear how one meatpacking plant can radically transform the demographics of the entire region.

The transformation brought to these communities by the meatpacking industry is indisputable. The interpretation of this transformation, on the other hand, is surely open for discussion. Northern Colorado's culture has surely deepened with the rising numbers of Hispanic citizens who bring with them a commitment to family and a rich cultural heritage.

But such diversity can either add value to the community or present its greatest challenges. The ICE action last week at Swift's Greeley facility, at least for the short term, threatens to drive a wedge between the Hispanic community and its non-Hispanic neighbors. The fear and anger over having families torn apart at Christmas will likely pass in time. And so it is the long-term integration of cultures that must be addressed in Northern Colorado and elsewhere, starting with Swift's responsibilities to its employees and the community.

Swift is Greeley's largest employer and as such it adds greatly to the city's economy.

But its insistence that it does not draw from an illegal work force rings more hollow with each passing year.

A review of the Greeley Tribune reports following the last immigration raid on the same plants when they were owned by Monfort in 1991 are more than a bit revealing. Company executives at the time claimed, "they had never knowingly hired illegal aliens." The company in 1991 claimed that it had been working cooperatively with the government and was stunned by the decision to raid the plants. It claimed to have requested and received the proper documentation for each employee it hired.

According to a Tribune article on Sept. 24, 1992, Dick Monfort, then head of Monfort meat packing operations, told the paper: "The INS agents abused the legal process to accomplish something they could not obtain by any other means. The raid by 200 armed agents from all over the United States, a helicopter and 80 vehicles was not only a blatant use of excess force and a waste of taxpayer money, but it humiliated over 1,900 of our employees."

According to news accounts at the time, the greatest concern was for the school children who had no one to pick them up and were likely traumatized by their parent's and relative's arrest and deportation.

In other words, nothing seems to have changed in 14 years.



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The Greeley Tribune Updated Aug 14, 2012 10:15PM Published Dec 22, 2006 02:00AM Copyright 2006 The Greeley Tribune. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.