Laws: October, 2003 - Number #01

Iowa gained more population from California than from any other state during 1990s: 18,287 people moved to Iowa from California, while 12,194 left Iowa for California. Most of the new arrivals in Iowa were Hispanics who took jobs in meatpacking plants in Storm Lake, Sioux City, Muscatine and Denison. Most meatpackers are constantly hiring, asking current workers to bring friends and relatives and often offering bonuses of $50 to $300 for each new worker who stays on the job 60 days or more. But there is also out-of-state recruitment. Tyson Fresh Meats and other meatpackers recruit workers in south Texas for its plants in Iowa and Nebraska; Tyson recruited 4,200 workers from Texas and Mexico over the past five years for its plants in Nebraska, which employ 10,000 workers. The Monfort plant in Grand Island, now managed by Swift & Co., has hired Bosnian refugees from Chicago and Sudanese refugees from Omaha. Under Nebraska law, companies with at least 10 percent non-English-speaking workers must report any recruitment of those workers from more than 500 miles away and must pay their travel expenses to the work place; if they quit within two weeks, the company must pay their travel expenses back to the place of recruitment. Workers hired by meatpacking companies must present documents showing who they are and that they are legally authorized to work in the US. Tyson and several managers of poultry processing plants in Tennessee were acquitted in March 2003 after an eight-week trial of charges that they conspired to recruit and smuggle unauthorized workers to work in poultry processing plants. Tyson managers had paid INS agents posing as smugglers $100 to $200 for each worker brought from the border to 15 plants in nine states (the migrants also paid the smugglers a fee). The government argued that Tyson's top management knew what the managers were doing; Tyson argued the plant managers were breaking company rules on their own. During the case, a defense lawyer asked a government investigator: Could the government have opted to spend "two quarters" to phone Tyson to settle some of the illegal immigration problems instead of carrying out a lengthy investigation that cost millions of dollars? "Yes," the investigator replied. Employers have high praise for the work ethic of Mexico workers. One said: "Mexican guys have pride in what they do. No matter what they do, they want to do it right because they don't want to lose their job and they want the money." Most meatpacking jobs pay $8 to $10 an hour, and immigrants are often willing to work extra hours. Wages. Tyson Foods (www.tysonfoodsinc.com) accounts for about 25 percent of the meat and poultry processed in the US. The 500 workers at its Jefferson, Wisconsin plant, who make pepperoni for pizzas, were on strike in summer 2003, resisting Tyson demands for wage reductions for new hires from $11 to $9 an hour. Tyson's Ken Kimbro said: "We're not saying the Jefferson facility is losing money. We're saying the cost in Jefferson is out of line and we have to make adjustments." The National Labor Relations Board rejected union charges that Tyson bargained in bad faith. Beef and pork wages have historically been higher than poultry processing wages, in part because most beef and pork plants in the Midwest were unionized while poultry plants in the southeast were not. Unions say that Tyson aims to reduce wages in the IBP plants it acquired in 2001 to poultry levels. Four firms, Tyson, Smithfield, Cargill and the Swift Corporation, dominate US meat processing. Canton, Missouri has a Peco Foods, poultry plant staffed largely by Mexican-born workers living in mobiles homes adjacent to the plant. One worker was killed by local teens attempting to rob him- many unauthorized Mexicans keep cash at home- and the local sheriff said that "The majority of Hispanics in Canton are illegal" and added that he would cooperate to "round them up and deport them." However, many workers left after the 850-worker Peco Foods plant laid off 200 workers whose SSNs did not match names on file. Workers earn $8 to $8.55 an hour. Tobacco. USDA spent $661 million buying 121,000 tons of tobacco from the 1999 harvest and buried it in landfills; the tobacco was of poor quality, and rejected by tobacco firms. USDA sets minimum prices and sets production quotas for farmers each year, based on market demand and whether there is any surplus from the previous harvest- quotas have dropped because US tobacco firms are buying more tobacco overseas. Tobacco-state legislators are proposing a deal in Congress that would have the US government spend $13 billion to "buy out" the quotas that have limited production in exchange for government-guaranteed prices since the 1930s. Importers and domestic manufacturers of tobacco products would be assessed fees to cover the cost of the buy out, and the FDA would gain authority to regulate the manufacture and distribution of tobacco products. The proposal is motivated by increased imports, which have reduced the amount of tobacco farmers can grow. Jeremy Olson, "Migrant pipeline fills meatpackers' needs," Omaha World Herald, August 4, 2003. Joe Cantlupe, "Flawed U.S. investigation undermines major immigrant smuggling case," Copley News, April 17, 2003.