Thread: 300 NC Hog Plant Workers Leave Jobs After Immigration Sting

Attrition through enforcement DOES work.


300 NC Hog Plant Workers Leave Jobs After Immigration Sting

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP)--Hundreds of workers at the world's largest hog slaughterhouse have quietly left their jobs or stopped showing up for work following a crackdown on illegal immigrants at the plant.

Many have submitted resignation letters to Smithfield Packing Co. and collected pay for unused vacation, while others identified by the company in November as having unverifiable employment documents quit without notice, company spokesman Dennis Pittman said. In all, Pittman said about 300 employees had left the massive plant in Tar Heel on their own as of Monday.

"Some of these people had been here seven, eight or nine years. It is certainly a blow to the company," Pittman said. In November, Smithfield sent letters to between 500 and 600 employees whose Social Security numbers, names or other personal information couldn't be verified. The company also fired about 50 workers for providing false information.

The firings spurred a massive walkout at the plant, as about 1,000 employees - most of them Hispanic - left in protest, quickly picking up the support of a union that has tried for years to organize the plant. Smithfield employs about 5,000 people who slaughter up to 32,000 hogs a day.

Employees were back on the job two days later after Smithfield agreed to rehire the fired workers and meet with each letter recipient, who then received 60 days to verify their employment status.

Those grace periods began running out this month. Pittman said about 50 workers have successfully resolved discrepancies in their employment documentation and remain employed at the plant. None have been fired, he said. Last month, federal agents arrested 21 people inside the plant on immigration charges.

Employees were called away from the assembly line by supervisors and escorted to a conference room where they were interviewed by agents and taken into custody. Pittman said some of those workers had been identified during the company's records check, while others hadn't.

http://www.cattlenetwork.com/content.as ... tid=107201

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

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