U.S. meat industry is rattled by raids

An immigration raid that led to the arrests of more than a thousand illegal immigrants at several Swift & Co. meat processing plants this week not only underscored the food industry's reliance on immigrant labor, but left some wondering: Who's next?

The industry openly acknowledges that its low wages draw foreign-born workers, inviting close scrutiny from federal immigration officials.

"It raises very serious questions for the entire U.S. meat processing industry," said Steve Kay, editor and publisher of Cattle Buyers Weekly, a newsletter in Petaluma, Calif. "The feeling in the industry is, well, 'Swift today, it could be us tomorrow.' "

The raids conducted Tuesday at six Swift plants nationwide snared 1,282 employees. About 230 of those were at the company's pork processing plant in Worthington, Minn., according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials.

The raid will likely cost Greeley, Colo.-based Swift millions of dollars, Kay predicted. The third-largest meatpacker in the nation behind Tyson Foods and Cargill Inc., Swift had $9.35 billion in sales last year.

While meat prices aren't expected to change, the industry itself -- often targeted by immigration officials -- could.

"The meat industry is targeted for one very simple, pragmatic reason: It has a high concentration of workers in a very small space," Kay said. "Federal agents can literally surround a plant and make a big brouhaha."

A call for reform

Both Cargill and Minnesota Department of Agriculture Commissioner Gene Hugoson called the raids a sign of the need for immigration reform. The state's food businesses rely on migrant and immigrant workers, Hugoson said, and the law should allow workers to come into the country to work jobs that would otherwise go unfilled.

"It's essential that the federal government get some kind of reasonable program put together to deal with lawful immigration," he said.

A spokesman for Cargill said a guest worker program and speedier resolution of permanent-resident cases would be a good place to start.

"We've said for a long time that a number of things need to be fixed, and hopefully this incident will lead to true immigration reform next year," Cargill spokesman Mark Klein said.

A 'Catch-22' for the industry

The industry's biggest trade group, the American Meat Institute, said paperwork is a "Catch-22" for companies. "If an employer accepts documents as legitimate that turn out to be fraudulent, they may face federal penalties. If an employer questions documents that are legitimate, the employer can face civil-rights charges," the group said in a prepared statement.

The group's president, J. Patrick Boyle, said in a prepared statement that the industry historically has attracted foreign-born workers, "because we pay, on average, nearly $25,000 a year plus benefits for jobs that require no formal training or prior experience."

The slaughtering and meatpacking industry employs 4,680 people in Minnesota, at an average hourly wage of $10.65, or about $22,000 a year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Nationwide, 500,000 people work in the industry.

Immigrant advocates have said that the pay and working conditions of slaughterhouse jobs are so minimal that they attract people who have few economic choices. "It's market forces at work -- simple supply and demand," said Bruce Corrie, a professor of economics at Concordia University in St. Paul who has studied legal and illegal immigration.

Wage rates in Mexico and Central America are lower, and the people who come here can make much more money to ease their lives back home, Corrie said. "There's a small hole in the fence" for people to come here legally and work, while the demand for their labor is greater.

Steve Meyer, an independent meat industry analyst based in Des Moines, noted that many Americans don't want to do the unpleasant work.

He predicted that there would be few applicants to fill the jobs left vacant by Tuesday's raid in Worthington, in part because most people in the area already have jobs.

The Worthington plant reopened after the raid minus about a tenth of its 2,300-employee workforce. The plant is in Nobles County, which reported an October unemployment rate of 2.6 percent. That's lower than the state's 3.3 percent rate and the nation's 4.1 percent figure.

Matt McKinney • 612-673-7329 • mckinney@startribune.com Gregory A. Patterson • 612-673-7287 • gpatterson@startribune.com