Big Meat Braces for a Refugee Shortage

[rangerrebew]

Big Meat Braces for a Refugee Shortage
Trump’s immigration restrictions will leave more jobs unfilled.
by Lauren Etter
and Shruti Singh
February 8, 2017, 7:00 PM EST
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The starting hourly wage at Cargill’s Fort Morgan plant is $14.90, 60 percent higher than Colorado’s minimum wage. Joe Amon/The Denver Post/Getty Images

Word of President Trump’s executive order barring the entry of international refugees shocked Fort Morgan, a town of 11,000 on the snowy plains of Colorado, some 80 miles northeast of Denver. Many of the workers at a Cargill Meat Solutions plant that’s the town’s largest employer emigrated from Somalia and Myanmar and had been waiting months, if not years, for relatives to join them. Now they’re afraid that reunion might never happen. As a result, the plant in Fort Morgan and other meatpacking plants in the U.S. that have dozens of openings may have to scramble to find a new labor pool.

“The refugees that have family members, they’re worried that they’re never going to be able to come here,” says Ryan Gray, program director in the Greeley, Colo., office of Lutheran Family Services Rocky Mountains, a faith-based group that helps refugees and asylees obtain jobs, housing, and other services. Of the almost 450 individuals Gray’s office helped resettle last year, about 40 percent got jobs at the Cargill plant in Fort Morgan or a rival JBS facility in Greeley.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-02-09/big-meat-braces-for-a-refugee-shortage

[GtHawk]

Oh come on, how many openings can there really be for Professional Decapitators?

[andy58-in-nh]

Oh come on, how many openings can there really be for Professional Decapitators?

ISIS needs jobs, right?

[truth_seeker]

Fort Morgan CO, one of my childhood homes. First place that I can remember. Two younger brothers born there, before we headed (back) to SoCal.

Then it was sugar beets, not government subsidized corn for ethanol, and chickens for muslim employment.

[jmyrlefuller]

Oh come on, how many openings can there really be for Professional Decapitators?

Especially at that living wage? I mean, it's not the prettiest work to be sure, but if they're paying $15 an hour as they claim, there should be quite a few people willing to do that work, at least for a little while.

[GtHawk]

Especially at that living wage? I mean, it's not the prettiest work to be sure, but if they're paying $15 an hour as they claim, there should be quite a few people willing to do that work, at least for a little while.

It may be that some feel uncomfortable with who their coworkers would be or maybe those 180 or so employees from Somalia and Myanmar do their best to make prospective no muslim employees uncomfortable and they don't feel $15 an hour is worth it.