Labor Secretary Su meets with Latino poultry industry workers facing abuse, threats

by

Michael McEwen

• Published on February 19, 2024 • Comments

Acting U.S. Secretary of Labor Julie Su speaks with labor and community leaders in Jackson, Miss., Wednesday, Feb. 14, 2024. The roundtable discussion, one of three in Mississippi, allowed workers and their representatives to present their challenges and enabled Secretary Su to discuss the work of the Biden-Harris Administration to reach every community and keep workers safe.
(AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)

The acting secretary of the U.S. Department of Labor visited with Latino workers and organizers in Mississippi's poultry industry last week to discuss abuses and threats levied against them – as well as how the federal agency can better protect them.

The roundtable, which was attended by dozens of workers and community members from across the state, was held at the Immigrant Alliance for Justice and Equity in west Jackson, where many expressed familiarity with the conditions leading to 16 year-old Duvan Tomas Perez's death at the Mar Jac poultry plant in Hattiesburg last July.

Perez, a 16 year old Indigenous Mayan who relocated to Mississippi from Guatemala’s northern highlands with his family in 2017, was pulled into a piece of power-driven chicken processing equipment while working as a nighttime custodian. He was heard yelling for help for several minutes before he perished, according to the incident report, but the equipment was not shut down.

Both federal and Mississippi law forbids minors from working with or near such equipment.

But Perez, who was attending middle school during the daytime, was working under job documentation that identified him as a 32 year old man, according to a subsequent Occupational Safety and Health Administration probe into his death that also resulted in a $213,000 fine issued to Mar Jac for their role in his death.

The Gainesville, Georgia based company – which was among the sponsors of Governor Tate Reeves’ annual turkey pardoning ceremony on Nov. 17 – laid the responsibility of that error on a staffing agency used to procure employees at Mar Jac facilities.

For more than an hour Su spoke openly with the workers in fluent Spanish about their experiences.

“These are very, very difficult jobs, and they’re jobs where too often workers do not bring home the pay that they're supposed to be paid. They are fearful of whether they're going to get injured on the job, lose a finger and even die,” Su told MPB News.

She heard from many about being forced to work near or with dangerous equipment -- often without proper training – as well as facing sexual assault committed by supervisors, stolen wages, preferential scheduling by managers along ethnic lines and the looming threat of deportation should they report those abuses to authorities.

“And they are also feeling very much like their immigration status gets weaponized against them, and that builds deep fear about coming forward. We know that we have to create environments for workers where they can come forward to report what's happening in order for us to put a stop to these abuses.”

A mural painted on the side of the Immigrant Alliance for Justice and Equity in west Jackson on Feb. 14, 2024. The acting secretary of the U.S. Department of Labor visited with Latino workers and organizers in Mississippi's poultry industry last week to discuss abuses and threats levied against them – as well as how the federal agency can better protect them.
(Michael McEwen / MPB News)

Lorena Quiroz founded IAJE in response to the 2019 immigration raids which detained -- and later deported -- hundreds of workers in Mississippi's poultry industry across several of the state’s largest Latino communities.

Over the course of one day in August 2019, nearly 700 agricultural processing plant workers – all of them undocumented immigrants – were arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement between the towns of Morton, Carthage and Canton, among others.

Agricultural and meat processing plants in Mississippi and the Southeast have long relied on immigrant workers from Latin America to fill gaps left in their labor force as it grew, and especially after African American workers began organizing for higher pay and improved workplace conditions.

Between 1990 and 2000, Scott County’s Hispanic population increased by more than 1,000% – and following an advertising campaign targeting Latino migrant communities in south Florida, Texas, Mexico and Central America, more than 5,000 moved to the area surrounding Morton and Forest in the span of a few years for work in chicken plants as the South became the nation’s fastest-growing Hispanic population.

Quiroz says that when Su’s visit to IAJE was confirmed, messages went out to workers and community members of these same communities across 30 some-odd Whatsapp group chats to spread the word.

“I know for a fact that people are feeling heard. The fact that we're having a meeting in Spanish is one thing that we were intentional about. We brought interpreting pieces so that we can interpret to English, so it means a lot,” said Quiroz.

“One of the speakers said hopefully this won't just be a document and a check-off like, ‘ oh I went to Mississippi, Let's check it off,’ but will be a continued collaboration between people in these higher up positions in the federal government to come here and listen to us so that we can feel protected.”

One specific legal protection Quiroz and other Latino organizers in Mississippi hope to see applied is deferred action, or the deferred deportation of an undocumented individual when their immigration status comes up vis a vis reporting workplace abuses to authorities.

The most recent example of deferred action relating to federal immigration policy, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, serves as an example of that, says Quiroz.

But a challenge to DACA is currently under review by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, and the program itself has long drawn the scorn of national Republicans who wish to do away with the program altogether.

In any case, Qurioz says Su’s open dialogue with the workers marks an important new step for a community that often feels it’s not afforded much consideration at all – even when in the throes of what they call systemic human rights abuses or a tragedy like Duvan Perez’s death.

As the organization’s brick building began to empty, and underneath a colorful framed poster depicting Berta Cáceres, an indigenous Honduran environmental activist assassinated in 2016, Qurioz recalled how some on local radio stations near Hattiesburg blamed Perez and his family for his death.

She said many in the state have a foundational misunderstanding of what immigration really means; both in why families like the Perez’s leave their homes in the first place as well as their realities when they arrive wherever that new home may be.

“We know, especially indigenous people of Central America, are fleeing climate change. They're not able to produce food, so they're coming to the fertile land of Mississippi to be able to survive and feed their families,” she said.

“So understanding the ‘why’ of why we're here – so that we can feed our people, so that we can make sure that our families are able to have a dignified life – and then seeing this child handed to his mom in pieces. That is just – why isn't there a huge outcry nationally about what has happened to this child right here?”