A $1.00 Chicken Sandwich Please, Hold the Benefits
I’ve noticed this story, but like the unreasonably cheap $1.00 chicken sandwich, I haven’t given it much thought. It appears that 100 unionized Perdue Farms chicken catchers will lose their jobs in March when their positions are eliminated.
Perdue Vice President of Corporate Communications Luis Luna released a statement saying that the company has hired North Carolina based subcontractor, Unicon to employ chicken catchers at its Georgetown and Accomack County facilities.
The statement noted that:
Affected associates can apply for positions with the contractor, and we hope a good number will be hired by the contractor.
How generous. As John Kowalko pointed out in another thread, the general inability for organized labor to make a peep of protest is very disquieting.
This race to the bottom for working men and women is offensive and cruel and a sign of a morally bankrupt culture of greed. Where is the press conference decrying Perdue’s profiteering by our political or union leaders? Where is the outrage and what does it take to provoke any kind of public outcry.
Are any other workers at Perdue unionized? Where is the strike, and the sympathy strikes? And where are the upstate pro-union people sending money to the strike fund?
While we are waiting for the waves of pro-union protesters to show up, perhaps Unicon and Perdue could receive some extra Federal attention from ICE, OSHA, Ag or local authorities.
How do you say “voter registration drive” in Spanish?
It seems NCC Democrats would have an incentive to register every legal Spanish-speaking person in Sussex.
We wouldn’t even have to drive as far as we did in the 1960s.
So Perdue’s plan is to make those jobs even more miserable. I don’t know how many of you have watched Food, Inc but this very thing was described in the movie. The ag producers use local workers and the go further and further away to get workers because the jobs are miserable for low pay. Use and discard, repeat.
At least the chickens fight for their survival.
It’s called competition, otherwise known as the free-market. You know, that same free-market that allows any worker to be anything they choose if they get educated, work hard and take some risks.
Why don’t some of the ‘leaders’ of the so-called chicken catchers that will possibly lose their jobs start their own sub-contracting company to compete with ALL of the various employers on the Eastern Shore?
“that same free-market that allows any worker to be anything they choose if they get educated, work hard and take some risks.”
Your understanding of “free markets” as they apply to labor is severly limited.
Chicken-catching is basically unskilled labor. You are right if you mean that such jobs always face downward wage pressure because they require the least education. In fact, Perdue says it took this step because its competitors already did so.
Just be honest and admit your position is, “Tough shit for them.”
There is the Germany/Belgium/holland free market with unions, robust middle class and high standard of living, and there is the Mexico/Hati/Philippines free market.
@Newshound – its called exploitation – let me spell that for you
E-X-P-L-O-I-T-A-T-I-O-N
try Miriam/webster for definitation……
Enjoy your chicken sandwich
@Obama08 – we already registered every Spanish speaking voter….and did a massive GOTV in Spanish as well as Voter’s rights training…
unfortunatey, due to the Voter Rights Act of 1965 not being fully implemented in Sussex yet, several were disenfranchised from voting at these last elections.
When the new Census figures are released officially, under federal law this will be corrected…
But any support from NCC is always welcome!
Geezer, I did jobs like that of the ‘chicken catchers’ and many other similar low-skilled, tough, dirty jobs. And I’m proud that I did. I did tons of ‘grunt’ work too. It taught me a good, honest work ethic; it taught me to be fair; and when I got older, I continued my education while working full-time (while raising a family) and became a manager of many unskilled employees.
I treated them well, gave them opportunity, hired and promoted many and got them training (even though I did not necessarily receive such treatment when I was in their shoes). It’s a beautiful thing.
However, those types of jobs will always be in our marketplace. And for those who chose to, or end up doing such work, are happy to get it. Prices and wages bring what the market will bear.
As I stated, why not be entrepreneurial and start a small, upstart contract ‘chicken catchers’ agency?
Newshound,
I’m sure you worked hard to get wherever it is you are today. I’m also sure you treated those employees who were under your supervision with a modicum of decency and respect.
It is, however, difficult to reconcile your willingness to think there is any measure of fairness in breaking a well-earned and negotiated union agreement by replacing a department with an outside lower paying out of state contractor/carpetbagger.
To think it is reasonable to expect those poor hard-working wretches to yank on their bootstraps, invest all their “riches” in forming a company to compete with the opportunists from North Carolina (a veritable paragon of workers rights and social fairness) leads me to hope that you are being satirical or just pulling our legs (not chicken legs like the “catchers”)
John Kowalko
Newshound: Yet your ethic remains “every man for himself.” As a manager of unskilled labor (I’ve done my share, too) you surely realize that some people are not going to be able to study or work their way out of those jobs. When we adhere to the fiction that such people “earn” only what employers can get away with paying them, while hedge-fund managers “earn” their enormous bonuses, we perpetuate inequity while pretending we have no control over it.
Nobody ever got promoted to Pharoah by working harder on the pyramid.
Those pyramid workers were never in danger of losing their jobs to workers willing to work for less. A cup of gruel a day was pretty heady renumeration, maybe they should have unionized for better benefits. Actually their funeral expenses were contractually guaranteed. If they lived to completion they got to be entombed with the CEO.
John Kowalko
I once had a herd of free-range chickens.
I hired a posse of little people on pygmy ponies at round-up in the Spring.
It was a beautiful thing really.
Until branding time.
I made the mistake of naming my ranch the XXX-K.
Very few of the herd survived.
I’d like to put my brand on that PERDUE fella’!!!
What would ya’ll do if you were CEO of Perdue? You have to look at every aspect of the company under your charge (stockholders, customers, supply-chain vendors, employees, safety, benefits – you get the picture).
Every company in every industry cuts costs in every way they deem necessary. We don’t live in a static world where everything is Norman Rockwell-like. Look around, we live in a much smaller world, where global pressure, trade and competition forges ahead on a daily basis.
There’s a monumental difference between running an efficient, high-quality business and charity. If every company decided to worry about ‘social justice’ and pure equality over running a for-profit entity, they’d all file for Chapter 11, eventually.
Perdue is privately owned. I have doubt that people like Newshound are sincere in their faith. They believe that wealthy people are virtuous by definition, and that corporations run by wealthy people are virtuous by the commutative property of addition. Like anyone who has taken a leap of faith, I don’t think it is the kind of thing you can argue someone out of believing.
I don’t happen to share his faith in the goodness of corporations or what we laughably refer to as “free markets.”
where are the lawmakers on this one?
oh wait, there in on it too… (yes, yes, except you JK)
That’s ok, pro business democrats running things will take care of the working stiffs.
It’s obvious that Poordue needs to compete with the Chinese and the only way to do so is to pay people less.
“I don’t happen to share his faith in the goodness of corporations or what we laughably refer to as “free markets.”
Why not move to a socially-democratic country then? Cuz America is based on Capitalism and the unencumbered ‘free hand’ of self-regulated markets. It’s not perfect, but it’s the best thing going.
If one (or corporations) overstep their bounds, they either lose customers or market share, or worse, they get arrested and sent to prison. I’m sure Bill Gates wouldn’t give 30 percent of his wealth away if he weren’t the world’s richest man.
“… and the unencumbered ‘free hand’ of self-regulated markets.”
LOL… I have no more interest in disabusing you of this nonsense than I have in talking a Baptist out of his faith in winged angels.
If one (or corporations) overstep their bounds, they either lose customers or market share, or worse, they get arrested and sent to prison. I’m sure Bill Gates wouldn’t give 30 percent of his wealth away if he weren’t the world’s richest man.
I’m still waiting for people to go to jail At BP, AIG, Bank of America, Goldman, Haliburton, AT&T, Verizon
It’s a great quote that only applies to To big to fail companies, b/c as you know, once a company gets so big it can’t fail b/c it would be too awful to the country.
So, your free-market utopia doesn’t and won’t ever exist in any fashion.
The real ‘Chicken King’ died a little over a month ago.
Over the last two years, Tyson Foods, along with all other poultry operations nationwide, have been devastated by rising feed costs, the recession and difficulty selling their poultry products without pricing themselves out of the market.
Thousands of layoffs have occurred. If not, bankruptcy would follow – and the hopes, dreams and of course Jobs that go along with that industry would disappear quicker than the visionary risk takers like Frank Perdue and Don Tyson, who started their companies on a wing and a prayer, ever dreamed of.
Newshound says that the American economic system is the “best thing going.” That’s a standad conservative cliche that has no credible evidence to support it. Norway provides the best standard of living to its citizens. The USA ranks thirteenth. The social democracies with all those progressive policies and high union membership have it all over us.
http://www.marketingcharts.com/topics/europe/un-norway-has-best-standard-of-living-niger-worst-10652/
Donviti “where are the lawmakers on this one?”
I feel as inexcusably helpless in answering that as I ever have about anything and I’m usually not at a loss for words. Maybe what we need is every blogger to write an extra paragraph, not for this site, but to send to every political leader in this state asking that question. I’m sorry I don’t have a better answer because those workers certainly deserve one.
John Kowalko
“difficulty selling their poultry products without pricing themselves out of the market.”
Do you really believe this nonsense? How do you “price yourself out of” the market for chicken? If chicken prices rose 10 cents a pound, do you really believe people would stop eating it? In favor of what? Tofu? Every other form of animal protein also depends on grain for feed, so it won’t be priced out of the meat market, either.
You just believe any line of tripe your corporate overlords slop into your trough, don’t you? You don’t know beef tenderloin from bull shit.
This is just the latest chapter in the Perdue chicken-catchers saga. Some years ago the chicken catchers sued ol’Frank and gave him a red ass in court. At that time Perdue had it rigged so that on paper the catchers were outside contractors. The court reviewed the evidence and said “NO!”,and awarded the catchers the overtime back pay and whatever else they were entitled to as employees. After that Frank even went as far as to field test a pair of chicken catching machines, which failed miserably. You crying, tree-hugging, animal rights fags really would have liked to see that. From what I was told by a grower who witnessed it, the machines really chewed ’em up. So now they are finally outsourcing the catchers properly. They will still be paid well for their hard work.
“Animal rights fags”? You eat chicken with that mouth?
I am sure they are right now developing chickens that will line up and commit suicide.
Until then, we have the Democratic Party.
“They will still be paid well for their hard work.”
Yeah delbert?
What bennies are they losing? It’s PURDUE so it can’t be much, but it’s gotta be something.
And you KNOW they gonna take a cut in pay, gotta make sure the middleman or cracker holding the whip get his money.
Chicken-catchin’s a dirty, stinking fucking job.
And this is just MORE CHICKENSHIT filling the nostrils for these workers to HAVE to suck up.
What a WORLD!!!!
John Kowalko rides the white horse again, the lone hero amongst all the horrible democrats!