011232 Illegal Labor Common in Meat Industry

Kansas City - A federal crackdown on Tyson Foods Inc. for employing illegal immigrants has exposed an uncomfortable secret -- the U.S. meat-processing industry is dependent on undocumented workers to keep plants running, and experts said change is badly needed.

Whether it is the broken-down trailer truck on the side of a highway with a dozen immigrants locked in the back, or the surprise raid of a meat-packing plant where hundreds of workers are rounded up and deported, evidence has been mounting for years that the hamburgers Americans eat are often produced with labor from undocumented workers.

“This is the tip of the iceberg,” said Dan Stein, executive director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). “This kind of recruitment and smuggling has been going on for years.”

In the Tyson case, two of the firm's executives and four former managers were indicted on charges of conspiracy to smuggle illegal immigrants in from Mexico to work at 15 Tyson plants in nine U.S. states as a way to boost profits, the Justice Department said.

The 36-count indictment stemmed from a 2-1/2 year undercover investigation by the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

The company has denied the charges of a corporate conspiracy, and said four of the six managers named in the indictment had been fired, and the other two are on administrative leave.

The charges against chicken-processor Tyson came on the heels of a similar case in the beef industry. Nebraska Beef Inc. of Omaha, Nebraska, along with several managers and a company owner, have been charged with conspiring to ship busloads of Mexican workers to Nebraska every few weeks to work in the company's beef-packing plant. The case is to go to trial April 15.

No one seems to have a handle on the actual percentage of illegal workers staffing the low-paying and often dangerous and dirty slaughterhouse jobs, but most experts agree it is high, likely over 50% in many packing plants.

“It's not a very nice job,” said Christine McCracken, food and agribusiness industry analyst at Midwest Research Institute. “It's a job that no one wants.”

After passage of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act in 1996, the INS launched Operation Vanguard to crack down on the meat processing industry's practices of employing illegal workers.

Of an initial 66 facilities investigated, 40 were found employing undocumented workers, the INS said. And out of about 24,000 employment verification checks run from 1998 through 1999, 20% were found to have discrepancies that warranted further investigation.

With each INS raid at a slaughterhouse, illegal workers flee, plants halt or slow production, and the impact is felt up and down the food chain from the farmer to the consumer.

Prior to the attacks of Sept. 11, there was movement in Washington on different fronts to both strengthen verification of worker status in meat-packing and other industries, and to provide for legalization of workers already employed in this country.

Mexican President Vicente Fox and President Bush met in Washington amid talk of some sort of amnesty for illegal immigrants or a guest worker program for Mexicans. Labor unions got on board the business-backed movement seeking blanket amnesty and an end to most sanctions against employers who hire illegals.

But since Sept. 11, the mood of the country has changed dramatically, effectively killing such moves, at least in the short term, said Marielena Hincapie, staff attorney at National Immigration Law Center.

“Now we're dealing with an anti-immigrant sentiment, and also a faltering economy. That is a major factor,” she said.

Hincapie said reform is desperately needed, both to protect workers who are induced to come to the United States and work in jobs without adequate pay or safe working conditions, and to make checking legal status of workers easier for employers. The current system is too burdensome on employers, she said.

Greg Denier, spokesman for United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, said the union hoped the Tyson case serves to resurrect the legalization effort.

“There are millions of workers in poultry and food processing who have been induced to come to this country with false hopes and false promises,” Denier said.

“They are integral to the functioning of this industry. Now is the time for legalization,” said Denier.

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