Large swaths of the refugee/immigrant labor force that came to America (or who were brought here by the federal government) to provide a ready supply of cheap labor for giant global corporations are still sick or are afraid to return to work in the meatpacking industry.
The Chinese virus has exposed a great vulnerability not just for the companies, but for the future of the country. Any intelligent company will now begin to see the need to move faster toward automationand then what happens to the literally millions of immigrant workers with no skills and no English to learn new skills.
Reutersthis week canvassed some of the BIG MEAT companies and reports that meat production is still not returning to its former capacity. Workers are sick or scared to return to work.
Notice how they even have to put Trump into this story headline, as if Trump’s order had anything to do with the continued problems of an industry that was not forward thinking.
Meatpacking workers often absent after Trump order to reopen
[Chinese owned] Smithfield Foods Inc [SFII.UL] is missing about a third of its employees at a South Dakota pork plant because they are quarantined or afraid to return to work after a severe coronavirus outbreak, according to the workers’ union.
Tyson Foods Inc (TSN.N) was forced to briefly close its Storm Lake, Iowa plant – a month after U.S. President Donald Trump’s April 28 order telling meatpackers to stay open – as worker absences hobbled its slaughter operations.
Nationwide, 30% to 50% of meatpacking employees were absent last week, said Mark Lauritsen, a vice president at the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW).
[….]
Infections have risen steadily in rural counties that are home to large meatpacking plants since Trump ordered them to stay open. At least 15 meatpacking counties now report a higher infection rate, on a per capita basis, than New York City, the virus’s epicenter – though that is likely a reflection of the extensive testing of workers and local residents along with elevated infection rates.
More than a dozen meatpacking workers, union leaders and advocates told Reutersthat many employees still fear getting sick after losing confidence in management during coronavirus outbreaks in April and May. Absenteeism varies by plant, and exact data is not available, but some workers’ unwillingness to return poses a challenge to an industry still struggling to restore normal meat output.
In a report about refugees working in food processing in Abilene, Texas we see the same story.
If you have been wondering why Texas is still the number one destination of new refugees being admitted to the US (even as politicians there SAY they want it stopped), it is because of companies like this one that employs large numbers of immigrant/refugee laborers while changing the social and cultural makeup of American cities.
The article atFood & Environment Reporting Networkbegins with the usual refugee sob story. They must teach that in Journalism 101—soften up readers to the plight of the poor____ (fill in the blank)!
The story is long. It explains in detail the problems with a work force that is uneducated and living in close proximity to each other.
The pandemic is just the latest threat faced by refugee food workers in Texas
Lawi’s dilemma is one that many workers around the world are facing. But former refugees like Lawi can be particularly vulnerable in this pandemic.
Mfaume Lawi (with family) was brought to Texas from the DR Congo by the International Rescue Committee to work for the food processing company.
Many former refugees are from rural parts of their home countries and had limited access to education. They might not read or write in their home languages, which makes it even harder to try to learn to read and write in English; they might only speak their own dialects, and their work experience is often constrained by the opportunities in overcrowded refugee camps where the average wait time to leave is close to 30 years.
A lack of education, work experience, and English language skills have made it especially hard for many former refugees to understand the scope of the pandemic and follow advice on social distancing.
Building ethnic enclaves is part of the problem….
Even without a pandemic, resettlement can present what feel like insurmountable obstacles. But agencies work to keep families and people of similar diaspora together because of their shared language and past, so they can quickly feel like extended family. Still, the fact that the community is often together—living in apartments near each other, spending time in each other’s homes outside of work—can be deadly in a pandemic.
Former refugees make up about 20 percent of the workforce at the AbiMar Foods plant. Because of that high number, the company’s outbreak was also a refugee-community issue. The close-knit nature of the community meant that those early days were especially crucial to stop the spread.
Bottomline, any smart company will be moving to mechanization and America will be left dealing with hundreds of thousands of refugees admitted in recent years who have no skills and little opportunity to gain any.
The Obama Administration told the UN in 2014 that we would be ‘welcoming’ 50,000 from the DR Congo over the subsequent five years.
We have now surpassed that number by at least 10,000. See here in late 2019 we were at 58,999!
What does that mean for the masses of refugees and other immigrants waiting to find a spot on the chicken or pork processing line in America?
Frankly, it spells doom and our great minds in Washington had better be working on a plan for managing the millions admitted to the US each year as cheap expendable labor.
“As companies have recovered their revenues and reopened their supply chains, they have increasingly invested not on rehiring the workforce but on automation and on reducing their dependence on manpower.”
(Leslie Joseph at Foresters)
The story is from Forbesand it addresses one of the many changes coming to America in the wake of the Chinese virus ‘crisis.’
Coronavirus Is Forcing Companies To Speed Up Automation, For Better And For Worse
Coronavirus will force companies to speed up their plans to replace jobs with automation, according to a report published by analyst company Forrester. In its report, Forrester notes that many companies are set to invest more in automation than in rehiring in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, corroborating earlier reports that had claimed many businesses were already planning to accelerate their automation strategies.
The news comes as businesses ponder how they can resume working amid lockdowns and social distancing. And while many will take the news as confirmation of their worst automation-themed fears, Forrester’s report urges companies who haven’t already done so to ramp up their automation plans. Indeed, Forrester holds that automation may become key to surviving a coronavirus recession, at least as far as businesses are concerned.
Let’s hope some in Washington are thinking ahead, but don’t hold your breath!
Update: After I had posted this story, I spotted this one at The New Yorkerentitled:
An A.F.L.-C.I.O. Adviser Considers the Future of American Workers
It is all about Presidential politics, race and voting, but a key word is missing when Michael Podhorzer, the former political director of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., who now serves as a senior adviser to the union’s president, Richard Trumka, discusses the future of the American worker in the wake of COVID.
Because it is all over the news these days, I figured this might be a good time to repost some stories that you might not have seen or have long since forgotten. Like this one from 2017 (sure is good we were able to recover RRWwhen it was removed from the web last summer!):
Foreign-owned Big Meat hires Lutherans to help them find and retain refugee labor
That is the crux of this story and not in my wildest dreams did I think that money was directly changing hands between the meat industry and a federal refugee contractor, in this case Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Serviceheadquartered in Baltimore, MD.
I always assumed it was an informal relationship where the largely federally-funded ‘religious’ charity (LIRS is 96% funded by you and not via the collection plate) just happened to be bringing immigrant workers to small town America.
Now we learn that there is a formal (secret!), contractual arrangement planned for pilot projects in four states with JBS USA a Brazilian-owned company.And, it makes me wonder if this isn’t new and whether similar arrangements are being made with others of the nine federal refugee contractors.***
For those of you in places like St. Cloud, MN frustrated that you can’t get local elected officials to listen to you, remember their seemingly illogical resistance to slowing the flow of refugees has nothing to do with humanitarianism and everything to do with changing America for the almighty dollar!
Global meatpacking giant goes all in for refugee labor
A Lutheran resettlement agency that places United Nations refugees into dozens of U.S. cities and towns is working with the world’s largest meatpacking conglomerate to train refugees for work in four American states while also softening up the local natives to be more “welcoming.”
JBS Headquarters in Greeley, CO Photo credit: me
The secretive pilot program between Baltimore-based Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service and the U.S. subsidiary of JBS Swift aims to pump more refugees into Georgia, Texas, Iowa and Michigan to work in the company’s meat plants. If successful, the pilot program could be renewed for a second year and replicated at JBS meat plants across the U.S., WND has learned.
JBS Swift, the Brazilian-based global meat-processing giant, has agreed to pay Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services, or LIRS, $155,000 to implement the pilot program over the next year in the four states, according to a draft of the partnership agreement obtained by WND from a person with inside knowledge of the deal.
“The shock here is to find out that a religious agency is being paid by a foreign global corporation to train refugees and ultimately transform the demographics of small towns in America’s heartland,” said Ann Corcoran, an expert on the international movement of refugees and the nine volunteer agencies that resettle them for the U.S.
The deal between the global meat producer JBS and the Lutheran agency has been dubbed “Rebuilding Dreams,” and is described in the draft document as a “grant and collaboration agreement” between JBS USA and LIRS in the four states.
“The primary goal of this agreement is to improve the capacity of JBS USA and local resettlement agencies to support and improve the hiring and retention of refugee employees at four pilot sites in Michigan, Texas, Iowa, and Georgia,” according to the document.
The following are the cities in those states where JBS has meatpacking plants:
Iowa – Council Bluffs, Marshalltown and Ottumwa, mostly pork production
Michigan – Plainwell, mostly beef
Georgia – Elberton, Douglas, Athens, Ellijay, Canton and Carrollton, mostly chicken
Texas – Waco, Lufkin, Nacogdoches, Pittsburg and Mount Pleasant, mostly chicken
“Rebuilding Dreams will achieve this goal by creating customized trainings and resources for key stakeholders, building stronger relationships through communications and technology platforms, enhancing the collection and evaluation of data, and improving the overall quality and culture of the workplace experience for refugee employees,” the agreement states.
The agreement also calls for improving the local “welcoming culture” in the cities where the refugees will be placed.
Part of United Nations agenda for sustainability
JBS is a transnational, global corporation that beats the United Nations “sustainability” drum on its website, and it also cashes in on the globalized “labor mobility” concept pushed by the U.N.’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
Read more here.The story is a detailed must-read about how a global corporation and a supposedly religious charity are changing America by changing the people.
And as a side reading project, see this 2006 articlefrom the Greeley Tribune involving Swift (JBS bought Swift) explaining how the meat industry went from being a desirable place for Americans to work to their model today that is increasingly reliant on the global movement of labor—-middle America be damned!
Don’t miss Bloomberg: Big Meat worried about Trump’s reduced refugee flow,here.
For Republicans it’s about money!
We know the Dems are pushing refugee resettlement in order to boost the number of Democrat voters, and if you are wondering why the Republicans aren’t doing enough to get the program controlled—look to the Chamber of Commerce and GLOBAL Corporations that have convinced the Republican leadership that the free flow of cheap and captive (uncomplaining) labor across borders is the future.
The jig is up!
Big Meat gets cheap labor, the Dems get voters, and you, the taxpayer, get to subsidize it all (including welfare for workers paid insufficient wages!). If you complain you are a hater, a racist and an Islamophobe!
LIRS is headquartered here in Baltimore. This is their own description: The Lutheran Center (LIRS headquarters) is a six-story structure constructed in 1999 on property owned by Baltimore’s historic Christ Lutheran Church. The building is located near Baltimore’s Inner Harbor in the historic Federal Hill neighborhood, a charming area rich with history and an eclectic array of eateries and shopping venues.
Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Serviceis the lead federal contractor for the following list of subcontractors.
Making it clear!
LIRS, in Baltimore, is not a separate group from the others on the list!
LIRS is the lead contractor that deals directly with the US State Department and divvies up incoming refugees between the agencies below—LOL! it is the ‘mothership’ to the following:
(Update: Since this post is from 2017 some of the subcontractors listed may no longer exist. I didn’t bother checking. See if the one near you is still up and running and let me know!)
So what do you do? Go tothis postI wrote earlier this month and get to work where you live!
For more on meatpackers and cheap immigrant labor, go here.
*** For new readers, these are the nine major federal refugee contractors largely funded by you, the taxpayer. Refugee resettlement is not first and foremost about humanitarianism so don’t let them shut you up!
This is just a quick update on the post I wrote, here a week agoabout Chinese-owned Smithfield Foods’ role in creating a massive Chinese virus hot spot in South Dakota.
Apparently the company is blaming the workers’ community culture and the workers point a finger at the company’s management of the plant. Thanks to reader John for bringing my attention to the story.
Smithfield Foods Is Blaming “Living Circumstances In Certain Cultures” For One Of America’s Largest COVID-19 Clusters
Was there any way to prevent the Smithfield Foods pork processing plant in South Dakota from becoming one of the country’s largest known coronavirus clusters, with more than 700 workers infected? It’s hard to know “what could have been done differently,” a Smithfield spokesperson said, given what she referred to as the plant’s “large immigrant population.”
“Living circumstances in certain cultures are different than they are with your traditional American family,” she explained.
The spokesperson and a second corporate representative pointed to an April 13 Fox News interview in which the governor of South Dakota, Kristi Noem, said that “99%” of the spread of infections “wasn’t happening inside the facility” but inside workers’ homes, “because a lot of these folks who work at this plant live in the same community, the same buildings, sometimes in the same apartments.”
But internal company communications and interviews with nearly a dozen workers and their relatives point to a series of management missteps and half measures that contributed significantly to the spread of the virus. A BuzzFeed News investigation has uncovered new information showing the company did little to inform or protect employees during the critical two weeks after the first case at the plant surfaced. Then, with confirmed cases rising quickly, Smithfield introduced new safety protocols but applied them unevenly across the plant’s departments, leaving hundreds of workers exposed.
In late March, as word of the first confirmed case leaked, workers began seeing flyers on notice boards and doors. “If you are at work and feeling sick,” the flyers stated, “tell your Supervisor and go directly home.” But the directive was posted only in English, three employees said, even though many of the plant’s 3,700 workers have limited comprehension of English. Safety notices at the plant are usually translated into as many as five languages.
It is a long story, if you are interested in the gory details, continue here.
Someone could write a very useful book, a new version of The Jungle,by focusing on one plant like Smithfield Foods in Sioux Falls, SD.
Giant global corporations are changing the American heartland with the continued pressure on government to import (for them!) cheap foreign labor.
An author could hit all the key elements of greed, politicians and fake ‘religious’ charities as enablers, the suffering of American workers, the changing culture of middle America and the federal government’s complicity in the whole mess.
The opening chapter would detail the spread of the Chinese virus through the plant and the impact it is having on Sioux Falls.
The dark underbelly of the giant globalist meatpacking industry in the US is being exposed as large numbers of slaughterhouse workers are creating US hotspots for the spread of the Chinese virus.
Neil Munro writing at Breitbarttakes a stab at finding out why the mainstream media, populated by Leftwing ideologues, have for years been on the side of the meat industry (I dubbed it BIG MEAT a number of years ago) as are the refugee resettlement contractors (six of nine are ‘religious’ charities)*** which have been acting as head hunters for globally owned corporations for decades. (See Bill Clinton brings refugee laborers to Iowa linked below.)
Wouldn’t you think the Lefties would be on the side of the struggling worker rather than acting like they are doing migrants and refugees a giant favor by admitting them to America and placing them in dreadful working conditions (now being exposed in the COVID crisis)?
There are many reasons they have turned a blind eye, but I think Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies provides one answer.
NYT Says Immigrants ‘Mourn’ Loss of Deadly, Low-Wage Meatpacking Jobs
Immigrants are “mourning” the loss of low-wage jobs in a Chinese-owned, crowded slaughterhouse run by Smithfield Foods in Sioux Falls, SD, according to an article in the New York Times.
Smithfield Foods, Inc., is a meat-processing company based in Smithfield, Virginia, in the United States, and a wholly-owned subsidiary of WH Group of China. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smithfield_Foods
The main character in the story is an immigrant from Sudan who has worked “11-hour days at Smithfield, six times a week for nearly seven years,” says the April 15 article:
[….]
The Chinese-owned hog disassembly plant has been shut down indefinitely after 600 workers caught the Chinese coronavirus while working alongside each other.
“Why would lefties be supporting this?” asked Mark Krikorian, the director of the Center for Immigration Studies. “The immigrants are working for low wages in terrible jobs!” The answer is that progressives prefer to pose as the defenders of migrants against claimed threats from ordinary Americans, he said, not from the real economic exploitation by employers.
[….]
The article ignores the American workers at the Sioux Falls mill and instead lauds migrants and refugees, most of whom are assigned jobs at the slaughterhouse by the government-funded refugee settlement groups that bring them into the United States as refugees.
[….]
Establishment journalists are now eager to downplay the painful impact of cheap migrant labor on Americans, Corcoran said. “The reporters are basically working for these globalist companies, for Brazil’s JBS [USA Holdings] and for China’s Smithfield Foods [in Sioux Falls]. They are carrying the water because they want more immigration. They are willing to overlook these workplace conditions, and that Americans would do these jobs if they paid enough — as they did at one time.”
Worshiping the god of diversity!
Who cares what the working conditions are when the Left is busy changing America by changing the people!
S**** the working conditions, we get diversity!
The reporters’ underlying message is that the migrants’ pain and labor are worth trading to get more diversity, said Krikorian. “These holier-than-thou-types [are] saying ‘We are doing such a good thing by letting them in the country, when it is, in fact, horrible work, but it is all so good in the end because we get diversity.’”
If you bother to read the NYT story Munro dissects, although not explicitly stated, there is an underlying message that these poor migrants are slaving away to provide our hams and bacon in Trump’s mean America.
See my BIG MEAT archive byclicking here. I had already been writing about meatpackers within the first year of writing RRW and their refugee labor appetites when I came across this news in 2008 about how Bill Clinton first came up with the idea of supplying his meatpacking buddies with Bosnian refugee laborers—in Iowa!
And, on the issue of health, maybe one day, it won’t be COVID we are talking about, but some of the other diseases we don’t screen for as migrants enter the US—I can dream!
*** For new readers these (below) are the nine federally-funded refugee contractors that operate as a huge conveyor belt monopolizing all refugee placement in America. Some have received direct funding from meat giants.
And, they do not limit their advocacy toward only legal immigration programs, but are heavily involved in supporting the lawlessness at our borders.
The question isn’t as much about refugees per se, but about who is running federal immigration policy now and into the future?
I continue to argue that these nine contractors are the heart of America’s Open Borders movement and thus there can never be long-lasting reform of US immigration policy when these nine un-elected phony non-profits are paid by the taxpayers to work as community organizers pushing an open borders agenda.
Coronavirus will force companies to speed up their plans to replace jobs with automation, according to a report published by analyst company Forrester. In its report, Forrester notes that many companies are set to invest more in automation than in rehiring in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, corroborating earlier reports that had claimed many businesses were already planning to accelerate their automation strategies.
