Undercover in a Chicken Factory

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I learn quickly that "unskilled" labor requires immense skill. The job of harinero is extremely complicated. In a simple sense, the harinero empties 50-pound bags of flour all day. The work is backbreaking, but it takes less physical dexterity than many jobs on the line. At the same time, the job is multifaceted and cannot be quickly learned. The harinero constantly adjusts the breader and rebreader, monitors the marinade, turns the power on and off, and replaces old flour with fresh flour. All this would be relatively manageable if the lines ran well. They never do.

Problems with the rebreader are the main reason the line shuts down. It is here, with Roberto, that my education as both harinero and worker begins. One of the first things I learn is that I'll be doing the job of two people. There have always been two harineros, one for each line. However, Michael, the supervisor, recently decided to run both lines with only one harinero. He is essentially doing what he has done, or will do, with virtually all the on-line jobs. Two workers, not three, hang chicken; two, not three or four, arrange parts; one, not two, checks the marinade levels. This downsizing has been going on throughout the plant. About six months earlier, a generation of supervisors who had mostly come up through the production lines were more or less forced from their jobs by a new set of plant managers. The new managers ordered the older supervisors to push the workers harder and harder. Knowing how hard work on the line could be, many supervisors refused by simply leaving the plant. The managers were then free to replace them with younger, college-educated supervisors like Michael.

Michael is a working-class kid clawing his way into the middle class. One of the first in his family to attend college, he just graduated form the University of Arkansas with a degree in poultry science. Supervisors start at under $30,000 a year. Although he "never imagined" earning that much right out of college, the trade-off is considerable. Michael arrives every day at 12:30 p.m. and never leaves before 3:30 a.m. Unlike the workers, of course, he enjoys a job with some variety, almost never gets his hands dirty, and can hope to move up the corporate ladder. At least in the short term, however, he's as consumed by the plant as the rest of us.

Nevertheless, Michael is the focus of our anger. Michael (guided by his bosses) oversees the downsizing. One reason he succeeds -- besides the lack of a labor union and binding job descriptions -- is that cutting workers on the line doesn't necessarily halt it. The fewer workers just have to work faster. But as Roberto pointed out, the breading operator is different. When the breading operator falls behind, the entire line stops. And Michael would soon be replacing two experienced harineros, Roberto and Alejandro, with a single trainee -- me.

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