Unofficial sister cities: Meatpacking labor migration between Villachuato, Mexico, and Marshalltown, Iowa

Human Organization, Winter 2002 by Grey, Mark A, Woodrick, Anne C

The meatpacking plant in Marshalltown, Iowa, is heavily dependent on production workers from one Mexican community. Not only has this plant developed a dependence on these immigrants, but the migrants, their families, and their home town have become economically and socially dependent on the plant. The result of this symbiotic relationship is the establishment of an unofficial "sister city" relationship between Marshalltown and Villachuato, Mexico. This article explores the emergence of this relationship and its consequences for both communities. It also explores some of the implications for the future of rural midwestern communities that depend on transnational migrant labor.

Key words: labor migration, immigration, transnational communities, Mexico, Iowa

?Que seria de Villachuato si no fuese por Marshalltown? (What would Villachuato be without Marshalltown?) Nada. (Nothing.)

Immigrant meatpacking worker in Marshalltown, Iowa

This paper examines the economic and human relationship between Marshalltown, Iowa, and Villachuato, Michoacan, Mexico. Marshalltown hosts a Swift pork packing plant that employs about 900 Mexican workers, and Villachuato supplies more than half of these employees. The plant would shut down without a continued supply of workers from this community-documented and undocumented-and the workers, their families, and their home town would suffer without the plant. How this symbiotic relationship works is the subject of this paper. We will address the consequences of this relationship not only for the workers and the plant, but also for Marshalltown as it comes to terms with its new role in the global labor market.

Marshalltown, Iowa, is a "new destination" community for Latino migrants in the United States (Grey and Woodrick, n.d.). It has joined a growing list of American towns that have attracted large influxes of immigrants and refugees with jobs in meatpacking plants. Anthropologists, geographers, and others have provided a rich literature on these communities. The list of these communities includes Garden City, Kansas (Broadway 1990; Stull et al. 1990; Stull 1990; Stull and Broadway 2001; Benson 1990; Grey 1990), Lexington, Nebraska (Gouveia and Stull 1995), and Storm Lake, Iowa (Grey 1995, 1996, 1997). Similar research has emerged about poultry plants and the carpet industry in the southern United States (Griffith 1995; Hernandez-Leon and Zuniga 2000).

In many respects, research in Marshalltown reinforces the literature on other meatpacking towns. Principally, the Marshalltown experience demonstrates how structural change in meatpacking created a growing dependence on immigrant and refugee workers and the resulting consequences for rural communities. Hiring Latinos solves a number of important problems for Marshalltown's meatpacking plant. First, the exodus of rural Anglo populations during the "farm crisis" in the 1980s did not reverse significantly during the 1990s. Indeed, Marshalltown's total population only grew between 1990 and 2000 because of the large influx of Latinos. In 1990, Marshalltown's total population was 25,178, of whom 248 (0.9%) were Latino. In 2000, the total population was 26,009, of whom 3,265 (12.6%) were Latino.

The median age in Marshalltown has risen from 31.1 years in 1980 to 38.4 years in 2000. The 2000 census reported that 21.7 percent of Marshalltown's population was 60 or older. Hiring Latinos makes up for an aging Anglo workforce.

Hiring Latino workers also helped the Marshalltown packing plant overcome a shortage of applicants during the thriving economy of the 1990s. In 2000, Marshalltown's average unemployment rate was 2.7 percent, well below the national average of 4.0 percent (Grey et al. 2001). Ratios of applicants to job openings in the Marshalltown office of Iowa Workforce Development averaged only 0.75:1 for all job categories. For openings in agricultural jobs, the ratio was even lower at 0.51:1 and in processing the ratio was only 0.78:1. (Grey et al. 2001).

Work in a meatpacking plant is not attractive to most Anglo workers. Even though wages rose during the 1990s, they are usually not high enough to attract local Anglos from other jobs. In 1997, for example, the average hourly wage in the Marshalltown plant rose from $7.50 to $9.55. In 2002, the average wage was about $10.50 per hour. Yet, even with growing wages, the work carries a stigma. The work is physically difficult and the plant environment is unpleasant, with a crude, violent atmosphere (see Stull 1994; Stull and Broadway 1995; Fink 1998; Grey 1999). Also, the presence of knives, perilous machines, and slippery floors combine with the repetitive nature of the work to create the highest injury rates of any U.S. industry (Bureau of Labor Statistics 2001).

For local Anglos, the wages are low relative to the difficult, dangerous, and distasteful nature of these jobs. This is reflected in statewide polls on the presence of immigrants in the workforce. When asked about competition between immigrants and Iowans for jobs, 76 percent said immigrants "take jobs other Iowans don't want" (Lutz et al. 2001:47).