Vernon, CA — Teresa Robles begins the shift most of the day at the pork processing plant in the Industrial Corridor, four miles south of downtown Los Angeles. She stomps on her feet for eight hours and constantly inflicts pain in her joints with repetitive movements, but also earns $ 17.85 per hour to support her family.
So when whispers began in early June among 1,800 workers and the facility was soon closed, 57-year-old Robles wanted them to be just rumors.
“But that was true,” she solemnly said at the end of the recent shift, “and now every day is a little closer to my last day.”
The 436,000-square-foot factory, whose roots date back almost a century, will be closed early next year. Smithfield Foods, a Virginia-based owner, says it’s cheaper to supply the region from a Midwestern factory than to continue operating here.
“Unfortunately, the rising costs of doing business in California made this decision necessary,” said Shane Smith, Smithfield’s CEO, who regulates utility bills and pig breeding practices. I quoted the Voter Approval Act.
Workers and company officials are seeing greater economic lessons in the imminent closure. They differ only in what it is. For Robles, despite years of dangerous work, it’s proof that “we’re just disposable to them.” For meat packers, it’s an example of politics and regulation that beats commerce.
The cost of doing business in California has been a long-standing issue. It was quoted last year when Silicon Valley success story Tesla, an electric car maker, announced that it would relocate its headquarters to Texas. Tesla CEO Elon Musk mentions home prices and long commute, saying “there is a limit to the scale that can be expanded in the Bay Area.”
Like many economic debates, this can take on a partisan hue.
Around the time Tesla left, California-based companies were accelerating their departure, according to a report from the conservative Hoover Institution at Stanford University. According to the report, 74 headquarters moved from California in the first six months of last year. In 2020, the report found that 62 companies were known to have relocated.
Dee Dee Myers, senior adviser to Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom, counters by pointing out California’s continued economic growth.
“Every time this story comes out, it is consistently disproved by the facts,” said Governor Myers, director of the Department of Business and Economic Development. According to Myers’ office, US gross domestic product grew at an annual rate of 2% over the five years to 2021, and California grew 3.7%. The state remains the technological center of the country.
Still, California’s manufacturing industry is declining faster than the country as a whole. Since 1990, the state has lost one-third of its factory work, which is now about 1.3 million, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, but down 28% nationwide.
The Smithfield factory is a symbol of California’s heyday of industry. In 1931, Los Angeles-raised brothers and sons of Irish immigrants, Bernie and Francis Clauati, started a meat-stuffing business and soon settled in Vernon. Later branded as Farmer John, their company became a popular name in Southern California and is known for producing their beloved dodger dogs and alpasters, which are sizzling in backyard cuisine. During World War II, the company fed the US military in the Pacific Ocean.
Almost 20 years later, Hollywood set painter Reglime was asked to create a mural at the factory, transforming a bland industrial structure into an idyllic landscape where young children chase pigs like Kerbim. .. It has become a tourist destination.
These days, it is also a symbol of the state’s social and political turmoil.
In explaining Smithfield’s decision to close the plant, CEO Smith and other company officials pointed out Proposal 12, a state-wide voting bill for 2018. This allows the pork sold in the state to move more freely.
The bill has not yet come into force and is facing problems in the US Supreme Court this fall. If that isn’t overturned, the law also applies to meat stuffed outside the state — the way Smithfield is currently planning to supply to the local market — but company officials anyway. , Says that passage reflects a climate unsuitable for pork production in California.
Passion can be heightened outside the factory as animal rights activists blame the captivity and treatment of pigs slaughtered internally. Protesters performed a serenade to water the pigs with their noses sticking out of the slat of the arriving truck.
In addition to opposition to Proposal 12, Smithfield claims that the cost of utilities for producing pork in California is about four times higher per capita than the other 45 factories nationwide. It doesn’t say how it was reached. Quote.
John Grant, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 770, representing Mr. Robles and the other workers at the factory, said Smithfield announced the closure as the two camps began negotiating a new contract. rice field.
“It’s a complete bowel punch and, frankly, a shock,” said Grant, who worked at the factory in the 1970s.
He said raising wages was a priority for the union to enter into negotiations. The company offered a $ 7,500 bonus to employees staying until closing, raising the hourly wage from $ 19.10 at the top of the scale to $ 23.10. (The rate at the company’s integrated Midwest factory is still a bit high.)
However, Grant said the closure of the factory was an insult to his members and they struggled with the pandemic as an essential worker. Smithfield was fined nearly $ 60,000 by California regulators in 2020 for failing to take appropriate steps to protect workers from being infected with the coronavirus.
“Are they going to run away suddenly now after all the employees have done throughout the pandemic? They are destroying their lives,” Grant said, and the union works to find new jobs for workers. He added that he would like to help find buyers for the factory.
Karen Chapple, a professor of urban and regional planning at the University of California, Berkeley, said the closure is an example of a “greater trend in industrial hollowing” in areas like Los Angeles. “It probably doesn’t make sense to be here from an efficiency standpoint,” she said. “It’s the end of a long escape.”
In fact, state data show that the number of food manufacturers in Los Angeles County has declined by 6% since 2017.
And when those jobs are swept away, workers like Mr. Robles wonder what’s coming next.
More than 80% of Smithfield’s employees are Latino-American, with a mix of immigrants and first-generation natives. Most are over 50, according to union leaders. People continue to work because of safety and benefit, but the nature of work makes it difficult to hire young workers with better options.
On a recent overcast morning, Vernon’s air was rich with the smell of ammonia. A worker wearing a surgical mask and carrying goggles and a helmet set foot in the factory. I hummed over a fence with a high forklift noise.
The streets of this area are lined with huge warehouses. Some people are vacant. Others produce wholesale local baked goods and candies.
Robles started working at the Smithfield factory four years ago. For over 20 years, she ran a small business selling produce in downtown Los Angeles. She loved her job, but when she died in 2018, she wanted him to send her body from Southern California to her hometown of Colima, Mexico. I needed money to praise. She sold her business for thousands of dollars, then she started in the factory and she earned $ 14 an hour.
“I was proud,” she said, reminding her of the early months of her new job.
Robles is the only provider for her family. Her husband has several health problems, including having survived a heart attack in recent months, and is paying $ 2,000 for her home mortgage in the Watts district of Los Angeles. .. Sometimes a 20-year-old boy who recently started working in a factory can help with the expenses.
“But this is my responsibility. It’s up to me to provide,” she said.
Robles has long chanted the Lord’s Prayer every night before bedtime, but now he often repeats it all day long in search of strength.
“They are kicking us out without an answer,” she said.
Other workers, such as Mario Melendez (67), who have worked in the factory for 10 years, share that unwavering feeling.
It’s an honor to know that his work helps feed people all over Southern California-especially around holidays, factory ribs, ham and hot dogs will be part of people’s celebrations.
But the factory was also where he was infected with the coronavirus, and he gave it to his brother, who died of the virus, as well as his mother. He was devastated.
“It’s a terrible shock,” Melendez said. He said he felt he was betrayed by the company.
So is Leo Velasquez.
He started night shifts in 1990 and spent $ 7 an hour packing and sealing bacon. A few years later, he moved on for a few days and worked in shifts for 10 hours.
“I gave my life to this place,” said Belasquez, 62.
Over the years, his body began to wear out. In 2014, he underwent shoulder replacement. Still, he wanted to continue in the factory until he was ready to retire.
“It won’t happen,” he said. “I don’t know where to go from here”
