Mass ICE Raids in Mississippi After Workers Fought for Better Conditions Explained

Beginning with Amy Goodman's reporting in this video from Democracy Now!, here are a few reports that raise a lot of concerns about the systematic dehumanization of immigrant workers and their families in Mississippi's chicken processing plants.   Relatedly, please do recall earlier reporting on the extremely consequential cruelty and resulting trauma already getting inflicted on children at the U.S.-Mexico border who as a  consequence of forced separation from their parents will pay an extremely high psychological price as follows:

This kind of trauma can permanently affect the brains of these children, and potentially their long-term development, explained Colleen Kraft, the president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, on Thursday at the Spotlight Health Festival, which is co-hosted by the Aspen Institute and The Atlantic. Excerpted from Olga Khazan's June 22, 2018 piece in The Atlantic titled, Separating Kids From Their Families Can Permanently Damage Their Brains

As if to relish in the cruelty, this ICE raid in Mississippi also happened on the exact same day that Trump was in El Paso, ostensibly expressing concern for the victims of an anti-Mexican hate crime that slaughtered 22 people, injuring 26.  

The story told on Democracy Now! about Mississippi is that this was an act of retaliation against the plants that  had been unionized by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union because these corporations do not support unions.

CSUF Professor of Social Work
Dr. Michelle Martin

Finally, do read this analysis of companies raided this week by Dr. Michelle Martin Assistant Professor of Social Work at California State University, Fullerton that she posted recently on Facebook:

Koch Foods CEO Joseph C. Grendy

“I’ve been doing a bit of research on the companies that were raided this past week in MS. All six chicken processing companies have wealthy white owners, none of who have (yet) been charged criminally for knowingly hiring undocumented workers (and they did know, because all participate in the E-Verify program).

Here's some information about the largest company and the worst offender: Koch Foods, Inc. (no relation to the Koch brothers).  The CEO and president is Joseph C. Grendys, a 58 year old white man worth $3.3B.

Koch processes more than 50 million pounds of ready-to-cook chicken per week, slaughtering 12 million chickens per week. Koch Foods, Inc. processes Wal-Mart's "Great Value" buffalo wings, chicken strips, chicken tenders and popcorn chicken, Burger King's chicken nuggets and other private-label brands at grocery stores, such as Kroger and Aldi (Archer Farms). https://www.chicagotribune.com/…/ct-confidential-chicken-bi…

Koch Foods, Inc. was raided under the Bush administration in 2007 for knowingly hiring undocumented workers, and they had to pay a fine of $536K in 2010: https://www.reuters.com/…/us-immigration-koch-idUSN28258450…

Apparently that fine wasn't enough of a deterrent for them, because they continued to hire undocumented workers. Why? Grendys' comment in the above-linked Chicago Tribune article explains the practice: maintaining a good labor force is very difficult and employee turnover is high.

They have also been targets of numerous allegations of egregious workplace conditions where Hispanic workers, particularly those without documentation were subjected to hostile and unsafe work conditions. Some of the proven allegations include denying workers bathroom breaks, sexually harassing and assaulting the female Hispanic workers, and harassing employees who attempted to unionize, including firing them and/or threatening them with ICE referrals.

One worker complained: "What I didn't like is they would yell at us and tell us we're good for nothing and we didn't know how to work, and sometimes they wouldn't even let us leave to go home when we were sick,"

https://www.nytimes.com/…/union-organizers-at-poultry-plant…

The work is grueling enough, but Koch Foods supervisors required workers to "chop" the chickens at a rate of 42-chickens-a-minute. "That pace means that many workers make 18,000 cuts during their eight-hour shifts as they prepare breasts, wings, tenders and cutlets for restaurants and consumers. If they couldn't keep up, or got injured, they were fired."

Also, the EEOC found on several occasions that the workplace conditions were dangerous and violated numerous safety laws. This resulted in injuries such as amputations and even death.

https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/…/koch-foods-cited-fo…http://src.bna.com/vWr

https://www.osha.gov/news/newsreleases/region4/01252018

Koch Foods, Inc. even had to pay one employee $1.9M for unsafe working conditions that led to the amputation of several fingers: https://www.wattagnet.com/…/32273-jury-rules-against-koch-f…

Here's one of the most egregious things Koch Foods, Inc. did. They not only knowingly hired undocumented workers (recruiting many from Texas border towns), they used their undocumented status to control and exploit them. A federal criminal investigation found that supervisors would often falsely tell undocumented workers that they'd received a "no-match" letter indicating a problem with their social security number, and for $700 the company could get them a new SSN.

And yet, it's not the company that gets charged criminally, it's the poor and vulnerable (and recruited!) undocumented workers: https://www.journal-news.com/…/sher…/aGsNHxQCJQVJmnK522l0iL/#

These workers made about $7.80 an hour, but if they worked in a darkened room where thousands of live chickens poured down a chute where workers grabbed them and killed them, and then hung them on a hook (about 40 per minute), they got $1 more per hour. If they worked in the "chopping" room, they got 50 cents more per hour.

Now, here's the suspicious part. In 2015 workers started organizing a union and Koch Foods, Inc. did everything they could (including outright harassment and firing organizing employees) to stop the action: http://ufcw75.org/…/illegally-fired-workers-win-settlement…/

And in 2016, the EEOC filed a lawsuit against Koch for paying all Hispanic females significantly less than males, while giving them more work, and then firing them for complaining: https://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/newsroom/release/9-30-19c.cfm

But in 2018, Koch lost a huge EEOC case for the overt sexual harassment of Hispanic female workers (mostly undocumented). This amounted to sexual harassment and assault as male supervisors felt free to grope and verbally harass the most vulnerable workers in the plant: https://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/newsroom/release/8-1-18b.cfm

Are you suspicious that the targeted raid was planned apparently right after they lost this large EEOC complaint? Me too.

Also, in case you're wondering, Koch Foods, Inc. doesn't just discriminate against Hispanic workers, the company discriminates against black farmers as well: https://www.propublica.org/…/how-a-top-chicken-company-cut-…#

They abuse the chickens too: https://www.chicagotribune.com/…/ct-mercy-for-animals-chick…

https://chicago.cbslocal.com/…/animal-rights-group-claims-…/

And these seven companies aren't the only ones engaged in the practice of recruiting undocumented workers (because they are an easily manipulated and stable workforce). In 2001 Tyson Chicken executives were charged for recruiting undocumented workers from Mexico, and then providing them with fake identification (the workers thought their IDs were real, and were later charged criminally for having false identification papers.)

Despite clear-cut evidence, the case was dismissed in 2003, and no company has been criminally charged since (apparently it's bad for U.S. business).

https://www.nytimes.com/…/tyson-foods-indicted-in-plan-to-s…

It was later discovered Tyson executives paid bribes to government officials, prior to the charges being dropped. In response to the bribery the DOJ fined the company $5.2 million, but did not bring criminal charges.

https://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/11/business/11tyson.html

Apparently Tyson execs didn't learn their lesson either, because they were back at it in 2010!:

https://www.justice.gov/…/2013/05/06/02-10-11tyson_foods_dp…

This is nothing more than slavery. The more vulnerable and desperate the worker, the better. Recruit undocumented workers, give them fake identification, work them to the point of grave injury or death, and then cry "America First!" and fire them if they complain. Then INS/ICE can come in screaming "we're a land of laws!" and charge the undocumented workers with violating U.S. immigration laws, while letting the companies slide (better for the economy, right?). The companies can then start all over with a new crop of scared and vulnerable workers, and the problem of unionization and demands for better workplace conditions is gone..

But hey, I hope everyone (especially the anti-immigration folks out there) enjoys their cheap chicken wings...

https://truthout.org/…/mississippi-ice-raids-targeted-work…/ “

***

In short, these reports help expose the state-sponsored terrorism that the Department of Homeland Security and this administration, are heaping on very vulnerable immigrant children and families who as workers, perform highly-dangerous jobs at very low pay in Mississippi’s chicken processing plants.  

And, as Dr. Martin correctly points out, this IS nothing more than slavery—and fascism, too, I might add, with our government working hand-in-hand with corporations to mete out monstrous cruelty against Latino immigrant families and children.

We must call this out, my friends.  These are not the good  people of Mississippi behind these atrocities.  The so-called "freedom" that Trump and the corporations want is to impoverish, enslave, and exploit hard-working, self-sacrificing people who are not in our country to do harm to others, but rather to work at great personal expense to them.  Sadly and tragically, THEY pay the price and NOT their greedy, heartless employers.

-Angela Valenzuela

Jackson on the Rise! The Movement to Build Economic Democracy in Mississippi

My earlier post on the subject of Black liberation took me to this inspiring work taking place right now in Jackson, Mississippi. We need cooperatives like these everywhere.  Inspiring!

-Angela Valenzuela

The Cooperative Movement in the South

Jessica Gordon Nembhard

In 1998 Clyde Woods wrote, in his path breaking book Development Arrested, that

As argued throughout this work, a new development path does not have to be invented. For over a century and a half, working-class African American communities and their allies have continuously experimented with creating sustainable, equitable, and just social economic, political and cultural structures. … In the 1960s, African American organizations that emerged from the civil rights movement had returned to the historic tasks both of building rural communities based on cooperative principles and of dismantling the plantation complex. …

If we are to build a society where working-class knowledge and participatory democracy are truly treasured, we must understand that the South is the center of African American culture, not its periphery. … Future political and economic movements must view African American folk culture as a central, and necessary, element in the construction of new institutions and new regional realities.

This theme of Grassroots Economic Organizing Newsletter celebrates the positive legacies and accomplishments of cooperative development in the past and lights the path to further growing the southern cooperative movement.  

Some of us will be in Jackson Mississippi the first week-end of May 2014 to celebrate Jackson Rising: a conference which will “serve as testimony to the vision and legacy of the late Mayor” Chokwe Lumumba, and will also serve as “a vehicle to help foster the development of cooperatives and other types of worker owned enterprises in Jackson.” See the first article in this theme:  Jackson on the Rise! The Movement to Build Economic Democracy in Mississippi.  We want to use this occasion to explore and highlight the cooperative movement in the South and Cooperatives in the South.

Dara Cooper’s interview witih Kali Akuno, Jackson, Mississippi is Rising: An Interview with Organizer Kali Akuno on Sustainability, Race, Class and Solidarity Economics, provides more details about efforts in Jackson to develop a cooperative commonwealth, that continue the 150 year legacy Woods mentions. Akuno explains that “If successful, Cooperation Jackson will represent a breakthrough for the Cooperative Movement in the South, as the first major network of predominately worker cooperatives to be established in an urban area in the region.”

Ed Whitfield, of Fund for Democratic Communities and The Southern Grassroots Economies Project, writes that what is needed to end the southern legacies of exploitation, enslavement, and wealth extraction is democratic ownership and democratic governance. Struggling to End Southern Bondage, reminds us of both the harsh past and the possibilities of economic democracy and cooperative solutions in the new south.

The Southern Grassroots Economies Project (SGEP) has compiled a handout with the international values and principles of cooperation, with comments and elaborations. This is an enhanced version of the International Cooperative Alliance principles, added to in order to eliminate the need for differing principles by some of the groups within SGEP. It consists of the original ICA principles with a few notes added to each description to make clear and expand some of the concepts included. The added remarks are delineated with brackets so that anyone reading this can see the principles as officially distributed.

The Federation of Southern Cooperatives has been promoting cooperatives in the South for more than 45 years. John Zippert reminisces about the early struggles and achievements of the FSC, and delineates its benefits and accomplishments in Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund works to end poverty and start social justice in the rural South. The monetary impact of the Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance fund, representing 75 cooperatives, credit unions and community based economic development groups across the South, is estimated at $400 million.

Dara Cooper discusses with Monica White the historical contributions of Black farmers to land ownership, food security and social change, in Black Farming, Self Determination and Resilience: An Interview with activist and researcher Monica White, PhD.  White explores connections between southern Black agricultural cooperative traditions, the role of the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, and urban farming through the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network (DBCFSN). She argues that “Growing food as a part of community resilience, organizing cooperatives as resistance are just a few of the many ways that people are working together to change lives.”

Another article in this issue focuses on one of the historic cooperatives in South Carolina. In 1948, on Johns Island, one of the Sea Islands in South Carolina, the Progressive Club owned a cooperative store and a credit union (the credit union is still in operation today).  In The Co-op that Changed the South, David Thompson traces the history of the Progressive Club’s cooperative activities and the Citizenship School the club established to teach literacy so members of the community could register to vote. By 1963, with 400 members in the co-op, the club received help from the Highlander Center in Tennessee to buy land, and build a larger store with meeting rooms that could also accommodate the Citizenship School.

Mississippi and other states are working to expand their laws on cooperatives. Jessica Gordon Nembhard wrote a white paper on the benefits and impacts of cooperatives to help legislators and others understand the importance of cooperatives to the economy and especially to community economic development and community wellbeing. Here we reprint excerpts from this study, and highlight information about the impact of cooperatives in four southern states: Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana and Florida.
The South is on the rise! GEO will continue to follow this movement and to share information, with new articles relevant to this topic posted periodically. Happy reading!
 

Go to the Southern Cooperative Movement theme page

Jessica Gordon Nembhard is a political economist and Associate Professor of Community Justice and Social Economic Development in the Africana Studies Department at John Jay College, City University of NY; and author of Collective Courage: A History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice. An affiliate scholar with the Centre for the Study of Co-operatives, University of Saskatchewan, Canada, she is a member of the GEO Collective, as well as the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives, the Eastern Conference for Workplace Democracy, the Southern Grassroots Economies Project, and the US Solidarity Economy Network. Gordon Nembhard is also a member of the Shared Leadership Team of Organizing Neighborhood Equity (ONE) DC (a community organizing organization in Washington, DC). Jessica is the proud mother of Susan and Stephen, and the grandmother of Stephon Nembhard.

Citations: 

When citing this article, please use the following format: Jessica Gordon Nembhard (2014). The Cooperative Movement in the South. Grassroots Economic Organizing (GEO) Newsletter, Volume II, Theme 18. http://www.geo.coop/story/cooperative-movement-south

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