The Death of the Meatpacking Industry

This is an absolutely fascinating look at how souless corporatism destroyed an industry – and lives.

Summary

Meatpacking was once a stable, middle-class union job, with skilled families working at the same plant for generations. In 1960, the industry was 95% unionized, offering wages similar to those in auto and steel. Workers were skilled, trained just like traditional butchers to process the entire carcass from slaughter to final cuts.

(Union meatpackers preparing bacon in Chicago, 1955. X post)



In the 1960s, Iowa Beef Packers (IBP) introduced a method where workers performed repetitive tasks, just learning one cut, reducing the need for skilled labor. This led to a decline in wages and union presence by the early 1980s, as more companies adopted similar practices.

The IBP method caused a surge in repetitive stress injuries and knife cuts due to the monotony and speed of the work. Today, companies like Tyson and Smithfield rely on a continuous influx of immigrants to maintain low wages and suppress unions. This monotonous labor-intensive work leads to very quick burnout among workers, resulting in a cycle of different immigrant groups filling these roles. (As in trash collection, new non-English speaking poor immigrants take over the industry, moving upwards in the second generation to better jobs. Here the job is so boring and dangerous, even new workers move as quickly as possible.)

To restore balance, suggestions include shutting down immigration pipelines, deporting undocumented workers, and promoting small-scale, skilled meat processing. Although this would increase meat prices, it’s argued that consuming this factory-processed meat should be reconsidered due to ethical and societal impacts.