ABSTRACT
Randy Rhodes, the president of Harvest Select, a food processing company in Uniontown, Alabama, thought he was just having a nightmare. He simply could not believe it when he showed up at his plant one day only to find that all of his 160 workers were missing. He had 850,000 pounds of catfish that had to be skinned, gutted, and trimmed for sale, and it would not be a pretty sight (or smell) if he were unable to get that work done. This was not just a bad dream and this experience was not limited to his company. In plants, fields, hotels, and restaurants across the state of Alabama, chickens went unprocessed, tomatoes unpicked, hotel beds unmade, and dishes unwashed as thousands of workers vanished, almost overnight.
