Posted on 01/17/2007 9:50:41 AM PST by GeorgiaDawg32
STILLMORE, Ga. -- After a wave of raids by federal immigration agents on Labor Day weekend, a local chicken-processing company called Crider Inc. lost 75% of its mostly Hispanic 900-member work force. The crackdown threatened to cripple the economic anchor of this fading rural town.
But for local African-Americans, the dramatic appearance of federal agents presented an unexpected opportunity. Crider suddenly raised pay at the plant. An advertisement in the weekly Forest-Blade newspaper blared "Increased Wages" at Crider, starting at $7 to $9 an hour -- more than a dollar above what the company had paid many immigrant workers.
(Excerpt) Read more at users1.wsj.com ...
ping
Two dollars usually is more that a dollar. And who says our school system sucks?
STILLMORE, Ga. -- After a wave of raids by federal immigration agents on Labor Day weekend, a local chicken-processing company called Crider Inc. lost 75% of its mostly Hispanic 900-member work force. The crackdown threatened to cripple the economic anchor of this fading rural town. But for local African-Americans, the dramatic appearance of federal agents presented an unexpected opportunity. Crider suddenly raised pay at the plant. An advertisement in the weekly Forest-Blade newspaper blared "Increased Wages" at Crider, starting at $7 to $9 an hour -- more than a dollar above what the company had paid many immigrant workers. The company began offering free transportation from nearby towns and free rooms in a company-owned dormitory near to the plant. For the first time in years, local officials say, Crider aggressively sought workers from the area's state-funded employment office -- a key avenue for low-skilled workers to find jobs. Of 400 candidates sent to Crider -- most of them black -- the plant hired about 200.
For the first time since significant numbers of Latinos began arriving in Stillmore in the late 1990s, the plant's processing lines were made up predominantly of African-Americans. The sudden reversal of economic fortunes in Stillmore underscores some of the most complex aspects of the pitched debate over immigration: Do illegal immigrants take jobs from low-skilled American workers? The answer in Stillmore initially appeared to be yes. But in the months since Crider began hiring hundreds of African-Americans, the answer has become more complex. The plant has struggled with high turnover among black workers, lower productivity and pay disputes between the new employees and labor contractors. The allure of compliant Latino workers willing to accept grueling conditions despite rock-bottom pay has proved a difficult habit for Crider to shake, particularly because the local, native-born workers who replaced them are more likely to complain about working conditions and aggressively assert what they believe to be legal pay and workplace rights.
Until the late 1990s, the plant employed a majority black production line, with whites and some blacks as supervisors, according to current and former employees. By 2000, Latino migrant workers who had long come and gone with the cotton and onion seasons were putting down roots, part of a national trend. The NAFTA free trade agreement hurt many Mexican farmers, prompting a surge of illegal immigration. At the same time U.S. immigration crackdowns made crossing the border more treacherous, prompting workers to settle in the U.S. The South became home to more than a third of the nation's Hispanics. Georgia's share tripled during the 1990s to 435,227, according to U.S. Census estimates. In 2005, the number of Hispanics topped 625,000 in Georgia, making up 7% of the population.
With the arrival of so many immigrants willing to toil for rock-bottom wages on brutal round-the-clock shifts, the number of black workers at Crider declined steadily to 14% in early 2006 from as high as 70% a decade ago, the company says. Wages stagnated at about $6 an hour, just above the U.S. minimum wage of $5.15 an hour, current and former workers say. Crider says it also paid incentives and bonuses not accounted for in hourly wages. As African-Americans left, seeking better pay or to escape the difficult and often bloody work, most were replaced by Latinos, employees say. Crider officials say the transformation to majority Hispanic work force happened gradually over most of a decade, without any encouragement by the company.
Legal Hispanic workers who remained at Crider after the raid complain that the new black production line workers are getting higher pay but don't work as hard as their Latino cohorts did. When the plant operated with majority Latino laborers, says Mr. Sauceda, his six-person assembly line produced 80 pallets of poultry daily, with each pallet holding 48 32-pound boxes of chicken. Now, with 15 workers on the line, most of them black, only 45 pallets a day are completed, he says. "The blacks sit in the cafeteria and don't come to the line until the chickens are brought in, but the Hispanics, we spend the time cleaning and doing things that need to be done," says Mr. Sauceda, who has subsequently left the company. Mr. Royals counters that blacks work just as hard as Latinos. He says he sees groups of Hispanics taking extra rests on overnight shifts. "I'm thinking to myself, man, I don't get that many breaks," he says.
Still struggling to fill its ranks, Crider began busing in felons on probation from a state prison and residents of a homeless mission from nearby Macon. Crider also hired another labor contractor who specializes in Hispanic workers. In recent weeks, dozens of mostly Hispanic workers have appeared at the plant, largely on the overnight sanitation shift. A Hispanic worker at the plant said he recognized some of the new workers as among those who had been dismissed prior to the federal raids for having false immigration documents. A few weeks later, immigration agents returned to Stillmore, and were seen questioning Hispanics at a grocery store... But Crider is still about 300 people short of its work force before the immigration raids. It is now bringing Laotian Hmong immigrant workers and their families from Minnesota and Wisconsin, with hopes that they'll stay on the job and build new roots in Stillmore.
I think they meant that starting wages were originally around $6 to $8 an hour, and now they're around $7 to $9 an hour.
Unbe-friggin-lievable how the stereotypes keep getting reinforced by actual fact.
I thought Americans wouldn't do these jobs. How does this help ANY Americans?
Take away the welfare freebies and the morale will improve. Doing hard physical labor is honest work, but after doing a bit of it most will figure out that staying in school and putting an effort into bettering yourself is worth it.
Americans will do these jobs - maybe not at the same price that illegals will. Maybe the price of chicken will go have to go up, or the owners profits go down. In any event, we would be better off employing our own citizens (in net).
Yes, these Amerians have a legitimate beef, in that THEIR government was flooding the job market in their community with cheap labor, depressing wages. Without government interference in the labor supply, wages will rise to realistic levels.
Correct.
We will be much better off employing our own citizens, in every respect.
The price of chicken might go up a bit.
But the demand on social services will go way down, as people move off of welfare into jobs.
The crime rate will go down: idle hands are the Devil's workshop. This reduces both property and life insurance premia, over time.
The incarceration rate will go down correspondingly. It costs a lot of money to imprison people.
The tax base will go up, because Americans have ownership and pay taxes and can't just "move on" when the Federales show up.
It is overall much better to have 100% US employment, with higher wages, social protections and higher prices for goods, then to have employed foreigners (here and abroad, esp. in China) who don't pay taxes to the US government or state governments, and have unemployed Americans on welfare, on Medicaid or in prison.
Really it's a no-brainer.
Obviously employers prefer to work with illegals, who are dirt cheap and docile, because legally without recourse.
That is not a legitimate way to make a profit, and it needs to be choked off. Employers may not like having to deal with employees who are higher paid and who have rights and recourse, but tough titty. That's the law, and it's our country.
It's no secret to black Americans who their competitors are. And it's a shame that our elected leaders of both parties think its better to allow illegal immigration than to enforce our own laws. Better for those who employ illegals that is, and worse for the rest of us.
I think what they are saying is that the pay range for illegals was $6 - $8 rather than $7 - $9.
You hit the nail on the head there, Bubba. It is a damn scary world when our own businesses and governments (fed., state & local) do all they can do to hire the illegals, and refuse to enforce our immigration/labor laws. It is no wonder the African/Americans are pissed, but they need to get their head out of their butts too, and get some education to go along with that attitude so many have.
That is the basic problem; employers have grown accustomed to workers who had no choice but to comply with brutal schedules, unsafe or unpleasant working conditions, low pay and who cannot call in sick or complain about anything due to their illegal status.
That's a really sweet deal for the employers but in really they have created an almost slave labor environment of agricultural sweatshops. Oh, the horrors, now they must deal with Americans who want decent schedules, breaks, benefits and reasonable pay.
So, more than twice the labor is now required to produce a little over half the output? Next step is for the company to close shop and move to Mexico.
If Americans could manage money as well with our vastly greater pay, we'd all have million-dollar savings accounts by the time we were 30.
"So, more than twice the labor is now required to produce a little over half the output? Next step is for the company to close shop and move to Mexico."
And the next step after that is to not allow the products to be reimported from Mexico, thereby handing that market share to the American manufacturers who stayed put, employing Americans.
We don't have to play games about this, and we should not.
Companyies can move plants to Mexico, but we do not have to allow them to deduct any of the costs of capital or payroll, any of it, from US income taxes.
Likewise, we do not have to allow their goods to be imported, thereby using the competition from quasi-slave labor to put Americans out of work and grossly inflate the costs of government welfare, law enforcement and prisons.
We can draw a line at the border and refuse to permit either the cheap labor or the products made by excessively cheap labor access to American territory.
These things are always choices.
"The allure of compliant Latino workers willing to accept grueling conditions despite rock-bottom pay has proved a difficult habit for Crider to shake, particularly because the local, native-born workers who replaced them are more likely to complain about working conditions and aggressively assert what they believe to be legal pay and workplace rights."
Slaves are more profitable than citizens complaining about unsafe workplaces, who knew? LOL.
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