美国国家公共电台 NPR Chicken Plants See Little Fallout From Immigration Raids

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AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

Federal immigration officials arrested nearly 700 workers at chicken processing plants in Mississippi. But you can still buy a rotisserie bird at your local supermarket tonight for less than $10. Administration officials say this kind of enforcement discourages illegal immigration, but critics say it just leaves undocumented workers even more vulnerable to exploitation. NPR's Scott Horsley joins us now.

Welcome to the studio, Scott.

SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE²: Hi, Audie.

CORNISH: So after this roundup, what kind of penalties have the chicken companies faced?

HORSLEY: None so far, although authorities say that could change because this is still an open investigation³. This was a particularly high-profile operation, but it's kind of typical of what we've been seeing in the Trump⁴ administration. Last year, there was a 300% increase in worksite immigration investigations⁵ and an even bigger increase in worksite arrest. But at the same time, we saw no increase in the number of charges brought against employers. Ted¹ Genoways wrote a book about the food processing industry called "The Chain." He told me this is reminiscent of high-profile raids at half a dozen Swift meatpacking plants back in 2006.

TED GENOWAYS: In all of those cases, there were work stoppages, huge numbers of people swept up, families divided but little to no consequences for the people who did the hiring. And those plants were back up and in production in fairly short order.

HORSLEY: And we're seeing signs of that in Mississippi as well. Koch Foods, one of the companies involved, said in a statement it closed for one shift yesterday but plans to keep operating to minimize customer impact. And Koch also announced plans for a hiring fair in Mississippi on Monday. And, Audie, the company said applicants⁶ should bring two forms of ID.

CORNISH: Yeah, Koch has already been cited for workplace discrimination. So what can you tell us about that and the other companies involved in the raids?

HORSLEY: Yeah. Last year, Koch Foods - which, by the way, is no relation to Koch brothers - paid nearly $4 million to settle a complaint brought by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Latino workers at the company's plant there in Morton, Miss., had accused the company of both racial and sexual harassment⁷.

Another of the companies targeted in the raids this week, Peco Foods, had two workers suffer amputations last year. The chicken industry boasted that its processing plants have been getting safer, but poultry⁸ workers are still twice as likely to suffer serious injuries and six times as likely to contract a workplace illness as other private sector⁹ employees. Debbie Berkowitz is a former OSHA official I spoke¹⁰ with today. She now oversees¹¹ safety programs for the National Employment Law Center (ph).

DEBBIE BERKOWITZ: The industry is totally dependent on finding workers who will not raise issues and who, to a degree, live in fear of the company. And they'll just keep their head down and do the work. And for the last 30 years, that's been immigrant labor¹².

HORSLEY: We did see after the Swift raids more than a decade ago some employers did shift to hiring more refugees, for example. But as this week's raid suggest, many of these food processing plants are still heavily dependent on undocumented workers.

CORNISH: Is there a sense that these - the high-profile nature of these raids could change anything in this industry?

HORSLEY: There's really not a lot of change on the horizon. You know, a quarter-century ago, the late journalist Tony Horwitz wrote a Pulitzer Prize-winning piece in The Wall Street Journal about the miserable¹³ working conditions at a chicken processing plant. And Debbie Berkowitz, who worked with Horowitz on that story, told me today things really haven't changed much since then.

BERKOWITZ: Americans really need to think about where their chicken and where their beef and where their pork comes from and really demand that the industry raise labor standards.

HORSLEY: But if anything, Audie, the industry appears to be moving in the opposite direction. The Agriculture Department is looking at deregulatory moves that would actually speed up processing lines in both beef and pork plants.

CORNISH: That's NPR's Scott Horsley.

Scott, thanks for your reporting.

HORSLEY: You're welcome.