"The Real Crooks." America. 22 September, 2008: 199, 1-3
When Homeland Security agents raided a slaughterhouse run by Agriprocessors Inc. in Iowa last May, authorities arrested 389 suspected illegal immigrants. The dramatic raid included hundreds of agents, and over 300 detainees were held for hours in a cattle exhibition hall before being charged. Worker’s rights advocates also pointed out that while arrests of undocumented workers in the United States have risen 1,000 percent in the past six years, to almost 5,000, few company owners have been arrested for hiring undocumented workers.
Agriprocessors, the nation’s largest producer of kosher beef, was in the news again recently. Employees at a small Agriprocessors plant in Brooklyn, N.Y., have been trying for three years to unionize, with Agriprocessors fighting them every step of the way, claiming that because the employees were illegal immigrants, the company was not obligated to recognize them as workers under the National Labor Relations Act. Agriprocessors has petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to revisit a 1984 decision that recognized the right of illegal immigrants to join unions by declaring that such workers “plainly come within the broad statutory definition of ‘employee’.”
Proof of turnover rate in Slaughterhouses and how the corporations view the immigrants.
Greenhouse, Steven. "Immigrant Crackdown Upends A Slaughterhouse's Work Force." New York Times [New York, N.Y] 12 Oct 2007: A.1.
Employee turnover has long been a problem at Smithfield and other meat-processing plants, but the problem has grown worse recently. Dennis Pittman, a Smithfield spokesman, said 60 percent of the new workers quit within 90 days of being hired, compared with 25 percent to 30 percent two years ago when many new employees were illegal immigrants.
The Tar Heel workers voted against unionizing in 1994 and 1997, but the National Labor Relations Board ruled that Smithfield had broken the law by intimidating and firing union supporters.
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