Migration News | January 2002
Tyson Foods Inc., one of the world's largest poultry processors, was indicted December 19, 2001, charged with 36 counts of recruiting illegal workers from Mexico and transporting them to 15 of Tyson's 57 poultry processing plants in the Midwest and South. According to the indictment, Tyson managers arranged with smugglers to pick up workers just inside the US border and paid them $100 to $200 a worker. The migrants also paid the smugglers a fee. Tyson then arranged transportation to its plants.
The INS used undercover agents, wiretaps and paid informants in the two and a half-year investigation. The INS estimated that 25 percent of meatpacking workers are not authorized to work in the US.
Tyson has 120,000 employees and annual sales of $11 billion; employment in the US meat and poultry processing industry is 400,000. According to the INS, Tyson sought to hire 2,000 unauthorized foreigners, usually in plants in rural locations. If convicted, Tyson could face fines exceeding $100 million, based on allegedly illegal profits derived from lower wages paid to the workers and their willful exploitation.
The government alleged that Tyson "did cultivate a corporate culture in which the hiring of illegal alien workers" was condoned by management "to meet its production goals and cut its costs to maximize Tyson profits." Analysts cited a management committed to aggressive cost-cutting, and said that at least some executives in the Springdale, AR headquarters knew about the smuggling of unauthorized workers. The charges are the first time INS has taken action against a company of Tyson's magnitude.
Tyson, like most meat processors, generally uses the INS's Basic Pilot program to verify the right to work of newly hired workers - employers submit the A-numbers of newly hired non-US citizens to the INS for verification. In this case, however, the government alleges that "Tyson utilized workers that were hired and provided to Tyson by temporary service agencies that did not utilize the ... Basic Pilot Program, well knowing that most of these workers were unauthorized for employment within the United States."
Tyson said it would contest the charges, that they involved a handful of managers who had been operating outside of company policy and that the six Tyson employees charged had been dismissed or placed on administrative leave. In a 1996 statement, Tyson said: "The consequences of knowingly hiring illegal workers are quite simply too high for us to hire people without proper documentation."
The undercover operation was based on the work of a Mexican citizen who, while employed at Tyson, "functioned as an illegal recruiter, smuggler and coordinator of transportation for illegal aliens and a trafficker in fraudulent documents." The illegal recruitment allegedly began in October 1994, when a Tyson executive referred to production problems at a Shelbyville, Tennessee plant and told subordinates, "That plant needs more Mexicans."
Tyson admitted that it used temporary employment agencies to obtain foreign workers, but denied responsibility for the violations committed by the agencies. For example, in 2001, 22 Chinese workers lost their temporary work visas less than nine months after arriving in the US to work at the Glen Allen, Virginia plant. Each worker had paid $10,000 to a Chinese company for the chance to work for as long as two years in jobs that paid $6 to $7 an hour.
The Tyson indictment raised questions about the personnel policies of Midwestern and southeastern meat and poultry processing firms. Shelbyville, Tennessee, a city of 16,000 that is 60 miles south of Nashville, is typical of the places with Tyson plants. The number of Hispanic residents rose from 92 in 1990 to 2,343 in 2000, and the higher number is considered an underestimate. Many live in a trailer park near the Tyson plant. Similarly, in Noel, Missouri, Tyson has a plant employing 1,265 workers at $7 an hour.
Joseph R. Greene, the INS assistant commissioner in charge of investigations, said that in setting enforcement priorities the agency looks at such issues as whether the employment of illegal migrants unfairly depresses wages and whether employers are "conspiring and working with organized criminals? Are they putting people at risk in terms of their lives or their health and safety? Those are the kinds of questions I have to ask before we're going to commit the limited resources that we have."Migration News:
