Many meat packers, as well as millions of workers in other industries, face not only the employers when they begin to resist brutal conditions on the job, low pay, humiliation at the hands of the bosses, and unsafe working conditions. Because they have been drawn into the workforce in the United States from around the world, they also must directly confront U.S. government agencies, such as the hated la migra. Making immigrant workers "illegal" and "alien," relegating them to a second-class and pariah status within the working class, and setting them up for victimization is an age-old divide-and-rule tactic of the bosses and their government.

The bosses profit handsomely from this arrangement by getting away with paying lower wages and through speedup, attacks on safety, and elimination of medical coverage, decent pensions, and other benefits won through unionization.

But the employers have a growing problem. Immigrant workers are part of the growing resistance of working people in this country, and they are becoming part of the leadership of a number of struggles in the meatpacking, garment and textile, and other industries. They have also joined protest actions to demand an end to attacks on immigrant rights, for citizenship rights, an end to the threat of deportation, and to defend bilingual education.

Until the early 1980s the meatpacking industry was one of the highest paying, with wages in the $15-$18 range. Then the companies went on an offensive to lower wages, increase the line speeds, and worsen working conditions. The bosses hoped that through massive hiring of immigrant workers they could make even further inroads against workers and keep unions out.

The employers' antiunion drive forced a decline in unionization through the 1980s from 46 percent to 21 percent of the workforce. In fact by the early 1990s there were no union-organized meatpacking plants in Omaha.

The life and limb of workers is at constant risk. The state of Iowa reported that in 1998, the injury rate was 9.3 out of every 100 workers. For those in meatpacking the rate soared to 58.2 per 100 workers. There is no reason that the meatpacking industry cannot be as safe as other industries. It has to do with how the capitalist system exploits workers to increase its profit levels. And it has to do with the level of union control on the job and the degree of fightback by workers.

The fact that even after the raid a layer of workers at Nebraska Beef stopped work and walked off the job to protest the line speed shows the potential for union organization in the area. But workers and farmers, and the labor movement as a whole, will continually be set back without joining the fight to stand with immigrant workers as part and parcel of the working class in the United States, with equal treatment and equal rights under the law.
 
 
Related article:
INS raid in Omaha targets meat packers' union drive  
 
 
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