Like many states of the South and Midwest that twenty years ago had a negligible immigrant population, North Carolina has seen dramatic increases in foreign workers. About half a million of North Carolina?s eight-and-a-half million residents are immigrants, but the state had the single highest rate of immigrant population increase among all fifty states during the 1990-2000 decade: a 274 percent increase from 115,000 to 430,000 in 2000 (and more than 500,000 today). Arkansas was fourth with a 196 percent increase. When Smithfield opened its Tar Heel plant in 1993, fewer than 10 percent of the hourly employees were immigrants. Today an estimated half of the plant?s workers are Hispanic immigrants. African-Americans make up about 40 percent of the workforce.
The rest of the report, in which Smithfield Foods figures prominently, reads like a modern version of Upton Sinclair's novel, "The Jungle". Here's one:
The line is so fast there is no time to sharpen the knife. The knife gets dull and you have to cut harder. That?s when it really starts to hurt, and that?s when you cut yourself. ? Smithfield Foods meatpacking line worker, Red Springs, North Carolina, December 2003.
Here's some more:
Many workers have painful reactions to conditions, but they do not act for fear of losing their jobs. ?I am sick at work with a cold and breathing problems, and my arms are always sore,? a Smithfield worker said. ?I have red rashes on my arms and hands, and the skin between my fingers is dry and cracked. I think I have an allergic reaction to the hogs. But I am afraid to say anything about this because I?m afraid they will fire me."
And more:
Slipping and falling in meat and poultry plants? wet conditions are another commonplace hazard and source of injury. However, workers consistently said that management is indifferent to the problem. Said one Smithfield employee: "In 2002 I slipped on remnants on the floor. I hurt my back, my hips and my leg. My knee turned black and blue and was swollen. I could hardly walk. The company doctor told me I was OK and to go back to work. But I couldn?t stand the pain. I went out on sick leave. The company fired me for missing time. They said they would take me back but only as a new employee on probation with no benefits."
In other words, it's no fun - to put it mildly -- at Smithfield Foods. The truth is, meatpacking is one of the worst jobs in America, which is EXACTLY why easily-exploited and intimidated illegal immigrants are so convenient for companis like Smithfield Foods to employ.
As I said before, no politician - Democrat, Republican, or Independent -- should be accepting money from such a company. Instead, they should be spending their energies investigating Smithfield's illegal and immoral labor, environmental, and illegal immigration practices. Politicians like Jerry Kilgore, who take huge sums of money from illegal-immigrant-employer Smithfield Foods, but then try to demagogue on the issue of illegal immigration in order to get elected, just set themselves up to be called hypocrites. As do, in fairness, Democrats who claim to be pro-labor, pro-environment, etc. Instead, they should all just tell companies like Smithfield to take a flying leap into one of their enormous hog sewage lagoons.