Apple Pie and Enchiladas: Latino Newcomers in the Rural Midwest

Chapter 6. On the Line: Jobs in Food Processing and the Local Economy

125 C H A P T E R S I X On the Line: Jobs in Food Processing and the Local Economy Maríaelena D. Jefferds and Ann V. Millard It seems as though they [Anglos] accept us, but it’s not that way. The truth is, they don’t accept us. They accept us as machines for working. But they don’t accept us as people. [Parece que nos aceptan pero no es así. La verdad es que no nos aceptan. Nos aceptan como máquinas para trabajar. Pero no nos aceptan como personas.] Sofía, a Latina working in a food processing plant in Fall County, Michigan You can’t get white people to do that. They can’t work as fast [as Latinos]. An Anglo woman farmer in Fall County, Michigan Large numbers of Latinos are moving to Fall County for work, and their arrival has upset many Anglo residents. Although Latinos have become the mainstay of the local food processing industry workforce, most local Anglos think of them as outsiders rather than community members. Many Latino workers chafe under their working conditions, but most Anglos see them as content with their jobs. This chapter explores various experiences of Latinos at work and the views of their Anglo neighbors swept up in the social and economic change that is reshaping life in the communities of Fox and Mapleville in Fall County, Michigan. Food processing plants have expanded in many regions of the rural Midwest , and they are the main attractions for Latino newcomers in many towns. In the grain belt, beef processing plants and feedlots have left Chicago and other cities with expensive land and costly union workforces for rural areas where grain is grown and communities have lower production costs. Similarly, pasta factories are located near grain fields in some regions. In fruit- and vegetable-growing regions, processing plants store, pack, freeze, and can harvest yields near orchards and fields. In addition to reduced production costs, improved road systems and changes in public policy may also have encouraged the movement of food processing plants to the rural Midwest. Some officials in Michigan say that public policy aimed at con06 -T3109 125 06-T3109 125 9/29/04 6:54:45 AM 9/29/04 6:54:45 AM 126 Jefferds & Millard trolling pollution and safeguarding groundwater pushed food processing of Michigan crops into other states. In recent years, however, the state legislature passed “freedom to farm” laws that exempt farms, including their food processing operations, from local control. In addition, legal changes in the 1980s and 1990s (for example, the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, discussed below and in other chapters) encouraged the influx of Latino workers by making it possible for many formerly undocumented immigrants to work legally and permanently in the United States. In recent decades, food processing has expanded rapidly in rural areas, making pollution and low pay hot-button issues for local people. According to Anglo focus group members in this study, the consolidation of many smaller food processing plants has made the few existing plants safer and better environments for workers. The consolidation has occurred in nearby towns and counties as well, and several family-owned businesses have become corporate farms (i.e., businesses owned by regional, national, or multinational firms). (See Naples 1994 on the growing pace of economic restructuring in the rural Midwest beginning in the post–World War II years and continuing into the 1990s.) Local Anglos have described the Fall County Food Processors as “expanding every summer.” Despite recent improvements in Anglos’ reception of Latinos in Fall County, some Latinos meet both overt and subtle bias, particularly on the job and at government agencies. Although food processing plants are providing the jobs that draw Latinos to the area, they are also the sites of working conditions and prejudice that bring bitter complaints from some Latinos. In Fall County, most Latino newcomers are former migrant farmworkers who used to come to the area each year. Most have gotten jobs on the line in food processing plants, where they cull vegetables and fruits that are being frozen and canned. Many work in the plants under difficult conditions at minimum wage with no health or retirement benefits, which leaves them depending on government programs—food stamps, subsidized housing, subsidized health care, and, for their children, Medicaid and subsidized school lunches. Local Anglos generally refuse to do the same work that Latinos do for such...