BY JOE SWANSON
DES MOINES, Iowa - A front-page article in the September 23 U.S. News and World Report detailed the impact in Iowa's meatpacking industry of immigration from Mexico. The piece is indicative of many reports in the big-business press this year on immigration, as the government and employers have stepped up factory raids and other attacks on immigrant workers.

Titled "Illegal in Iowa," the US News article says that "perhaps no industry is so dependent on... low-wage labor as the nation's meat and poultry companies. Meatpacking is a tough, $94 billion-a-year business, where profit margins run at 2 or 3 per cent. More than half of the beef and pork industry is dominated by just three companies: IBP, Cargill's Excel Corp., and ConAgra's Monfort Inc." These three companies control 80 percent of U.S. beef production.

The article also explains the big changes that have occurred in the industry over the last decade as the packing bosses have pushed for bigger profits. "At IBP's beef plant in Dakota City, Nebraska, one of a handful of unionized IBP installations, the speed of the chain from which carcasses are hung and the meat trimmed accelerated 125% from 1969 to 1994. In the past two years the speed has increased 17% to 330 head per hour [while] the number of line workers has increased only 6%."

As a result, the packing house industry has the highest industrial injury rate in the U.S. Some 36 percent of packing house workers are seriously injured each year, the article notes. At IBP's Storm Lake, Iowa plant, site of raids earlier this year, 635 worker compensation claims were filed between 1987 and 1995 (that's six workers every month). Fewer than 5 per cent of those who filed had Spanish-language surnames, though about a quarter of the plant is Latino. IBP says it doesn't keep injury data by race and cannot verify the figures.

The US News article reports that in 1987, IBP was discovered keeping two sets of injury logs for the same plant, and fined by OSHA a total of $2.59 million for safety violations. The case was settled a year later for $975,000, less than 20 percent of the original fine. The article explains that many IBP workers, especially immigrants, postpone getting medical treatment, claiming that the company targets workers who file injury claims. Union officials side with bosses
Immigrant workers are special targets for the bosses in general. A recent incident that has sparked a lot of discussion among this reporter's coworkers occurred at the IBP plant in Perry, Iowa. A Latina worker, Amparo Zelaya, was injured when the supervisor at her work station grabbed her and shook her arm. Zelaya explained in a statement to the police that her boss had gotten angry when she did not know how to do a job on a line she was not trained at.

IBP spokesperson Gary Mickelson told the Des Moines Register the company has found no evidence of any wrong-doing on the part of the supervisor.

Jim Oleson, president of United Food and Commercial Workers union (UFCW) Local 1149, which organizes the plant, sided with management and said the union has also found no evidence to substantiate the "allegations." The local plans to take no action until additional information is found, Oleson said. The refusal of officials of the UFCW - the main union organizing packinghouse workers - to lead a fight to defend immigrant workers against both the INS and the packing bosses has led many Latino workers to desert the union.

The logical conclusion of the UFCW officialdom's do-nothing stance was seen in a September 8 article in the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier entitled "IBP union leader says it's time to stop bashing company." This article is based on an interview with David Zanders, who represents UFCW Local 431 at IBP's Waterloo, Iowa, plant, site of two recent raids by la migra. Zanders told the newspaper that "this union does not condone [illegal immigration], I do not condone that. And in my opinion, this company does not condone that."

Zanders, whose local represents 1,400 of the 1,700 production workers at the plant, said "this company has flourished, has provided over 2,000 jobs. We've got all the major medical benefits, the whole nine yards... And for some reason, we don't get the recognition." The identification of union officials with the company's "right" to exploit for profit means that the union is powerless to defend all workers.

Zanders finishes his defense of IBP: "I am sick and tired of hearing nothing but negative things about IBP. We have a lot of employees who really like their job, who are journeyman meatcutters and take a lot of pride in doing a good job. But when you as an employee are constantly hearing negative things about your employer, it brings down the morale." Zander's approach puts the local union tops squarely on the side of the boss and the immigration police. `Arrests of workers weaken union'
Opinions varied among packing house workers in Iowa on the INS raids and the working conditions in the industry. "The Mexicans are good union people; 90 per cent of them voted to go on strike along with the rest of us," a young worker who is white said in an interview at the Farmland Foods plant in Denison, Iowa. A strike vote had been taken a few days earlier by UFCW Local 271 there.

Farmland demanded the workers accept a wage freeze and increase their share of health insurance payments. The strike authorization vote passed by 94 percent. Company and union officials then entered into a mediation service. Most workers saw no alternative but to accept the company's offer when the union didn't launch a fight. The new contract included seniority-based bonuses instead of pay raises the first three years, and a base wage increase of 30 cents the fourth year. The starting wage at Farmland has dropped from $10.54 an hour in 1982 to $9.70 today.

After talking to workers at the plant gate in the morning, Militant reporters visited two trailer parks on the outskirts of Denison, where many of the workers at both the Farmland and the nonunion IBP plant in town live.

Carrie, who is married to a kill floor worker at Farmland, was eager to talk about the new contract. "My husband has worked at Farmland for nine years," she said. "We were farmers for 20 years before that until we lost the farm. My husband voted against the contract offer and I agreed with him. The bonuses for some might be close to catching up to the cost of living; but for the majority of us it won't even come close."

Judy, 19, has lived in Denison all her life. She was visiting a few of her immigrant friends when Militant reporters ran into her. "These people come here only because there isn't enough work in their countries to pay enough to feed their families," she said. Judy told us that a number of Denison residents think the INS should raid the two plants there, especially the local sheriff, who blames immigrants for an increase in crime.

Militant reporters also talked to workers at the Swift pork plant in Marshalltown, Iowa, early October. The INS had raided the plant three weeks earlier, arresting and deporting 150 Latino workers. Opinions varied widely on the immigration raids.

Rita is an 18-year-old Chicana who has worked for Swift on the cut floor for about two months. Although she understood why Latino immigrants come here for jobs, she said, she did not think people should be allowed to stay if they are "illegal."

"The thing that is most terrible in my mind is that the INS had deported a man and woman that had been forced to leave their nine month old baby with the baby sitter," Rita said. "The INS would not let them go get the baby."

Workers at the Swift plant gate, had various views about the raid; some were for the raid and others were opposed to it. Lyle, who opposed the raid, said that "the arrest of these workers, many of them were members of the UFCW, weakened the union."

Joe Swanson is a member of UFCW Local 1149 in Perry, Iowa. Bill Kalman and Gerardo Sánchez, members of the United Transportation Union in Des Moines, contributed to this article.  
 
 
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