Exploiting undocumented Guatemalan migrants

Last week I commented that the photos in Returning to the Roots of Case Farms’ Workforce were terrific but that I wanted more story. It turns out that the more detailed background about Guatemalan workers at Case Farms could be found in this New Yorker article (Exploitation and Abuse at the Chicken Plant).

Case Farms, like other food processing plants, often exploit undocumented immigrant workers. They pay them less than required; force them to work in unsanitary and dangerous conditions; and use their legal status against them when they organize or protest the conditions under which they are forced to work.

González challenged her firing before the National Labor Relations Board, a federal body created to protect workers’ rights to organize. The N.L.R.B. judge wrote, “In my opinion, [Case Farms] knew exactly what was going on with respect to her employment status.” The company, he said, “took advantage of the situation.” The board eventually ruled that González had been illegally fired for protesting working conditions. But the victory was largely symbolic. In 2002, the Supreme Court had ruled, in a 5–4 decision, that undocumented workers had the right to complain about labor violations, but that companies had no obligation to rehire them or to pay back wages. In the dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer predicted that the Court’s decision would incentivize employers to hire undocumented workers “with a wink and a nod,” knowing that “they can violate the labor laws at least once with impunity.”

Case Farms had broken the law, but there was nothing González could do about it. The doctor told her that she needed surgery for carpal-tunnel syndrome, but she never got it. A decade later, her hand is limp, and her anger still fresh. “This hand,” she told me, sitting in her living room. “I try not to use it at all.”

What happened to González was part of Case Farms’ decades-long strategy to beat back worker unrest with creative uses of immigration law. 

I can't help but think that these are the criminals to which President Trump often refers - migrants, bit employers. After reading their personal stories of struggle, both in Guatemala and the US, how does one respond that they're criminals by crossing the border and that nothing else matters.

I guess one can hope that President Trump's crackdown on undocumented immigrants will make it more difficult for food processing companies to hire undocumented workers. In that case, they will have to raise pay and improve working conditions so that US citizens take the jobs (an acceptable price to pay for consumers,). Theoretically, that's the way it should work, no?

But that doesn't seem to be the case. The company instead turned to other vulnerable populations in the US, refugees from Bhutan and Burma. Since those populations might not be present a long-term solution, Case Farms is moving towards further automation.