Thursday, September 4, 2014
Chapter 6: At a Slaughterhouse, Some things never die.
Chapter six hits close to home in many ways. First the chapter is centered around our own state and secondly it talks about one of the largest industries in North Carolina; The Smithfield meat packing industry. Which has been put under scrutiny in many ways; from the way they process their pork and how they treat their workers.
This chapter focuses on on four groups that are "segregated" throughout the meat packing factory and in the Bladen County. Groups or races are groups in descending order; White, Indian, Black, and Mexican.
There is a lot of resentment among the Black community and the Mexican. They are fighting for jobs that pay under minimum wage so that they can try and make a living. At first in the county it was hard to get a good job if you were part of the miniortiy group, but then with a lot of protests and work. Jobs began to give way to the Indians, and Blacks in the community.
The issue we see in this chapter is how there is the resentment of Blacks to Mexicans and then Indians, and then Whites to everyone else. The Mexican community feels that the Black community are "lazy and want to take their money" and the Black community is tired of jobs being given to immigrants because they will "work" for lower wages.
Race is not only being applied to the color of an individuals skin but their cultural background. Where they come from for example the whites, blacks, reds (Indians) and then you have the "Mexicans". The town is being split from who can speak Spanish and those who cannot. Everyone is struggling to make a living and earn money. But when it come to the factory work the easier less labor intensive jobs are given to the white and Indian workers, and then the cut, cleaning, and processing line is split into gender and race. Where if you are black you are placed in a semi higher work status then if you were "Mexican".
When trying to understand where people and their background line up in the workforce of Smithfields you could make a descending chart or tree that separates into branches of race, background, wage, and language. In what other ways have you seen the racial stigma being used as not only to separate the color of ones skin but against them either in religion, skin-color, or cultural background?
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I agree that this chapter hits pretty close to home, and it's shocking knowing that this was going on/is going on so close to where we currently live our lives. The entire chapter sounded like something that would be typical 80 years ago, not 15 years ago.
ReplyDeleteI think the relationship between whites and blacks and blacks and Mexicans is really ironic in this chapter, and that's evident in Baker's comment that "There's a day coming soon where the Mexicans are going to catch hell from the blacks, the way the blacks caught it from the whites." It seems there's a trickle-down effect of perceived hierarchy, as well as anger and blame. Everyone is so angry at each other while they all still struggle with the exact same problem: to make a living.
However, I would disagree that there is a large element of cultural differences being taken into consideration in this scenario. Aside from mention of Spanish-speaking Mexicans, there seems to be little value or consideration for anyone's culture. Spanish speakers are mainly just associated with Mexicans, as opposed to being seen as a separate cultural trait: for instance, there is no mention of English-speaking Mexicans getting better jobs than only Spanish-speaking Mexicans. It's almost reminiscent of the caste system in India, where one is born into a social hierarchy and all other elements of their lives have no effect on this determination. Just as at the Smithfield factory, it seems that one is judged and grouped based on their skin color and nothing else. The company doesn't care about the employees or their culture because they don't have time to with a 100% turnover rate.
The fact that the Smithfield plant in North Carolina assigns jobs based almost solely on race is deplorable, and surely illegal. It also doesn't make much business sense, since job skills and work ethics are not dependent on skin color. That the company does not care about the legal or ethical issues involved in their job assignment process is a real problem, but I think the fact that they are causing and perpetuating racial tension is an even bigger problem. By separating employees by skin color, the management is exacerbating an already tense situation both in the plant and in the community. The employees don't get a chance to work with people who are "different", and therefore never get a chance to discover the things they have in common. This works to the company's advantage, because the workers are so untrusting of each other that they couldn't even come together to vote in a union, even though their wages and working conditions would probably have improved with union support. Of course the company did not want a union, because that would give the workers a chance to make more money and have some power over their work, both of which could cut into profits, which had double.
ReplyDeleteI think it was great the Mrs. Fernandez broke out of the mold and talked to the white convict who was working beside her, but unfortunatety that experiment failed. If the company assigned jobs based on factors other than race, interactions like this would be more common, and hopefully some would have better outcomes. The practice of separating workers by race may make sense in some ways to the company, but with so much distrust and bad will among the different groups, and all those knives laying around, there could be a very serious incident if tempers flared and things got out of hand.
I completely agree with what you've said, Suzy. While a different assignment method that promotes and ensures racial diversity would help to resolve some of these miscommunications between groups, I think the fact that the company's owners continue with a system that goes against good business sense speaks volumes to the hierarchical system that is going on in the factory. The owners have caught onto the fact that there are plenty of people, especially Mexican immigrants (as the article mentions) that are willing to take the jobs of those who quit, and they believe that keeping the workers segregated and marginalized will work to their advantage in the way that they won't unite to create unions because they're too busy disliking each other.
DeleteThis story provides a great example of how racial tensions and definitions change over time. The racial problems in America historically date back to conflicts between whites and blacks, but with the incorporation of these new groups, the Mexicans, we see new stereotypes and issues developing between the three. Whites still place themselves at the top of the hierarchy, and now the blacks propose preferential treatment to the Mexicans, instating their authority/power/importance over the newest group.
I think Becky, Alexa, and Suzellon covered the chapter quite well. I would like to point out that in 2013 a mega China meat company became Smithfield's largest stockholder. What affect might this ownership have on the way Smithfield hires and handles its employees in the future? Given China's human rights reputation, what will the employee pool look like a few years from now?
ReplyDeleteIt will almost certainly look much the way it does now. The plant will have to work with the people it has on hand. I know that area and have driven past that plant many times. The Hispanic community in the surrounding towns continues to grow. I don't think Chinese ownership of the plant will have much of an impact on conditions. Having a predominately Hispanic workforce might. When companies like this see an opportunity for the exploitation of workers with little to no repercussions, they will usually take it, whether they are Chinese or American owned.
DeleteI think this chapter really integrated a lot of different aspects into the discussion of race, it brought economics, language, and even gender into the mix.
ReplyDeleteThe biggest thing that I took from this chapter was how stark the separation between these groups really is. Because the company continues to encourage and even add more weight to this racial and cultural separation, the lines between these groups just keep becoming more definite. No one is encouraged to cross these boundaries and try to communicate with someone outside of their predetermined group, as in the case of Mrs. Fernandez, because this would disrupt the "order" of the factory. There is even a hierarchy or competition in some instances, of traffic on the small two lane road when employees leave work everyday!
Because this separation exists and there is relatively no intermingling of groups, the idea of a union forming or the workers being able to help each other out in the long run in any way, just doesn't seem possible to me. As Suzellon brought up, this ends up working to the companies advantage as well and by continuing to enforce this separation, they retain employees who work for the bare minimum and will never band together to question this because they are so untrusting of each other.
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ReplyDeleteScott, I was shocked when I moved here from California where unions are a huge force to be reckoned with. My first job here informed me that NC is a "right to work" state, and I quickly learned that even a whisper of union representation is interpreted as a revolution. In my experience here, co-workers who have learned the ropes tend to be very very cautious of the word "union." I don't know if anyone else has picked up on this, but I find irony in the fact that this company made such a decisive move on Paula Deen's racial comments. She was their spokesperson, and they fired her when the media brought her racist behaviors into the limelight. They seemed so concerned to protect their image on race, at the same time race is clearly an issue in their plants.
DeleteThis was interesting for me to read since I have had family work before in factories (specifically assembly line work) and they have told how many groups where seperated. So I wasn't suprised to see it in this reading but I never considered the amount of tension between these groups. Of course there seems to be a hiearchy at play at Smith Field and the sad thing is it probably still continues on today. I never considered the idea that this seperation could be a tactic for companies to prevent Unions from growing. Another thing is that we don't really see this type of issues being brought to the publics attention or even lawsuits against what does see illegal. Unfortunetlly this probably does continue in other compaines today, all taking advantage of groups who all just need some money, thus are willing to work hard laboring jobs for minimal pay.
ReplyDelete