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

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

For most Anglo plant managers, their real objection to this situation was not Latino migration because they could often use these frequent movements to keep wages low, at least in the aggregate. They also benefited from the fact that Latinos often used migratory networks to supplement wages at the plant, which, of course, meant the plant could pass on at least some of the costs of its production (Griffith 1987). No, their real objection-whether they could articulate it or not-was that Latino workers, and particularly the Villachuato workers, had discovered important ways to use their status as transnational labor to their own advantage.

In Marshalltown, quitting is as much a part of Latino migration strategies as movement itself. This strategy is perhaps the only way workers and their families can take full advantage of their status in the global labor market and in Marshalltown as a transnational community. The incomes available in meatpacking, relatively good compared to other available jobs, further rationalize this strategy. Furthermore, most Swift workers from Villachuato are not interested in settling down in Marshalltown because they have obligations to families, homes, and a community, which just happens to be 3,000 miles away. Instead of being irresponsible as many Anglos believe, Villachuatans are tremendously responsible to a community they seldom see.

In 1997, Swift introduced a new wage scheme to help reduce worker turnover. Within a month on the job, if proficient at their assigned task, workers could earn as much as $10.50 an hour. Under the previous wage structure, workers may have waited up to two years to earn the highest available wage. Turnover rates dipped, but remained around 80 percent per year. Anglo bosses seemed to presume that higher wages would encourage Latinos to stay in Marshalltown, becoming a permanent working class at their di,posal. Instead, higher wages seemed to encourage frequent migration. This seeming paradox is tied to an understanding of the relationships migrant workers maintain with the sending community.

Transnational Connections: Villach ato and Marshalltown

Swift management underestimated the importance of workers' loyalities to their sending regions. Very few of the Anglo bosses we met had ever been to Mexico. So, for most of them, rural Mexican villages were nothing but stereotypes: small, dusty backwaters lacking the amenities and lifestyle available in the United States. Although some Anglos understood that workers had families in these communities, they assumed the best thing workers and their families could do for themselves was to settle in the United States.

Workers' descriptions of their home villages, did, in many respects, fit Anglo sterotypes about isolation, dirt streets, limited public services, and a depressed economy. Out Latino workers were using their wages to improve their home communities. In the case of Villachuato, for example, this meant installing an underground water system and electricity, upgrading homes, paving streets, remodeling the central plaza, purchasing new concrete park benches, renovating the Catholic church, and purchasing appliances.