The Chicken Trail: Following Workers, Migrants, and Corporations across the Americas by Kathleen C. Schwartzman (review)

The Chicken Trail, by Kathleen Schwartzman, is an ambitious effort to explain the labour market transition in the US poultry industry by examining the movement of workers, chickens and migrants between the southeastern United States and Mexico. Conceptually, she uses the “metaphorical commodity chain” (xv) to link global and bi-national economic pressures that ultimately impact the flows of labour, commodity, and capital. Set against the process of globalization, the author weaves through the contentious immigration debates and dispels the commonly-held myths about the causes of dependency for immigrant labour in industries occupied previously by American-born workers. Specifically, Schwartzman seeks to answer the following research question: what accounts for the ethnic labour succession from predominantly African American females to Hispanics in the poultry industry? Based on extensive quantitative and qualitative research, she concludes that the ethnic succession is “an industry solution to labor-management conflict.” (30)

In an effort to provide a balanced view on immigration’s impact on domestic employment, Schwartzman identifies the key issues from the opposite ends of the political debate and uses her research data to refute some of the taken-for-granted claims. The first issue is whether or not ethnic succession is a result of American workers shunning undesirable occupations. Clearly, the poultry industry has developed a poor reputation for workers because it requires working in dirty, dangerous and difficult conditions, with nominal benefits and minimal upward mobility. The supporters of this argument assume that mobility across the primary and secondary sectors of the economy may be less fluid, thus leading to labour shortages in the least desirable industries. Secondly, there may be non-economic factors, such as labour recruitment strategies and the ready availability of immigrant labour, which structurally discourage employment of American workers. Once set in motion, the tipping scale in employment opportunities shifts abruptly toward immigrant workers unless there are enforceable regulations providing incentives for employers to hire domestic workers first. Lastly, the increased demand for chicken consumption domestically and internationally accompanied an integration of technology and machinery to debone and process chickens in automated, high-speed lines. The introduction of Taylorism in the plants not only accelerated the pace of work, but also instituted work rules that mimic Detroit’s auto plants. The distressed and discontented workers, however, may lack the capacity to improve their collective work conditions when the industry has suffered from a rapid decline in national union membership. A potential key to solving the problem of work undesirability in the poultry industry may rest on the direction that labour organizing takes in the future.

Schwartzman has no illusions about the difficulties inherent in the poultry work, thus the labour shortage or vacancy argument is still feasible. But, what concerns the author is the fact that, prior to the 1990s, Hispanics were nowhere to be found in industries that hired American-born labour force, especially in states like Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, and North Carolina. The author’s important argument is that African Americans never genuinely declined these jobs. In fact, the work conditions had improved with labour unions securing higher wages and better benefits. Schwartzman makes a cogent argument that the ethnic labour succession is attributed to the industry’s effort to address a dual crisis that became evident during the early-1990s. The first crisis deals with labour-management responses to rising labour mobilization and militancy. Schwartzman posits that between 1990 and 1994 the industry witnessed the peak of labour militancy, despite the downward national trend in labour union activities. In response, employers utilized various methods in order to manage a disciplined workforce, including firing discontented workers, preventing labour union formation, and employing undocumented workers. The second was the profit crisis due to fluctuations in business cycle, including overproduction and increased costs. It was precisely during this period, around 1995, the author claims that the expansion of chicken industry led to simultaneous increases in the supply of chicken and...