“The good news is that the owners who decided to hire low wage immigrants instead of Americans are seeing their businesses closed.”
The meat packing business is an interesting story....They used to be some of the best paying jobs in the country. I knew a lot of guys that went to college, got a four year degree and came back only 6to end up working in the packing plant.
Not because other jobs were not available but because it was the best paying job out there, degreed or not.
Then IBP came to town and changed the industry forever. Hiring illegals or temporary legals in the mid 70’s for just a bit above minimum wage forced the entire industry to follow suit to compete. It’s been that way ever since.
FACT, my brother and several friends worked at a meat packing plant within a small city of 35K people, in Washington State.
I say this because they didn’t centralize so much of the packaging. They would ship out meat sans hide, and they processed it for local sales.
It was a union job, they had very high grade beef. Prime or Choice was all you could get of meat not ground up.
He was making $16K a year in 1976 which was great pay, and he quit to go there. They were getting about $8-12 an hour plus full benefits.
I think that method of distribution is long gone. Of course all spoke English, and the Christmas parties were legendary.