ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 global pandemic brought into sharp relief the precarious nature of paid labor for the great mass of U.S. workers. Widely identified as those who occupy the “front lines” of defense against the deadly virus, “essential workers” cleaned hospital rooms, cared for the sick, transported people and goods, sold food and basic household items, and performed other vital tasks. Meatpacking and poultry processing workers, the overwhelming majority of whom were Brown and Black, were a key group. Their laboring activities were at the center of the multiple fallouts that resulted when a severe public health crisis radically altered labor and production on a global scale. For Brown workers, tightening immigration restrictions and ramped-up ICE raids at plants sanctioned the caging and deportations of thousands, many of whom had moved from Guatemala, Mexico, and El Salvador, for example, to try to establish economic footholds in Mississippi, Alabama, and Arkansas. Black workers, on the other hand, longtime residents of the South for many generations, were trapped by low-wage work and abusive work environments, likewise suffering the exacerbation of work conditions. This essay will analyze Brown and Black workers’ experiences in the South’s meat processing industries in the 20th and 21st centuries to consider how the Nuevo South became the setting for changing industrial work cultures and for multiracial and multiethnic struggles to build worker power.
