June 2000

Delta Pride guts contract

Indianola, Miss. Delta Pride, the largest catfish plant in the world, has found a new method of exploiting workers. Delta Pride is located in the deep Mississippi Delta with about 700 workers, 80% of whom are Black single mothers. In 1986 they fought this company, owned by 178 white farmers, to stop its plantation-style mentality and to demand dignity, respect, and better working conditions on the job.

One contract clause we fought hard to achieve is experience pay, which management has targeted. The contract states that an employee who leaves Delta Pride and returns within three years can, after probation, receive the pay their past years of service in the catfish industry have earned them.

The company says it cannot find workers in the area to work, but this is not true. The experience pay is one reason this company refuses to hire experienced workers back.

This May Delta Pride officials asked permission from the Indianola Area Planning Commission to put trailers on their land to house migrant workers. This company intends to place six trailers on its property just about a mile away, where the smell from the plant is terrible, and put eight workers in each four-bedroom trailer. They will demand that they work every day-sick or whatever the circumstances-or they'll be shipped back to Mexico.

The reason this company is using Mexicans is for cheap labor, and they think they will not complain about anything because they do not want to be sent home. The company thinks that the Mexican workers' goal is to work at any cost and in any conditions so that they can send money back to support their families.

Delta Pride is following in the footsteps of other catfish factory owners who have brought migrant workers into the facilities and pay them less money. It is their strategy to pit the migrant workers against the Black workers. Black workers are protesting this decision made by the Planning Commission, not because of any bias, but because they know that these workers will be used to replace them, and used in ways to break the contract or keep it from being more radical in the future.

The more migrant workers they bring in, the less the workers within the community will be hired. We, as workers, took a stand against this company to build this company into a place where workers have a voice. But this company will hire workers even more exploited to try and turn it around. They plan on treating the Mexican workers even worse than they do us.

Several years ago I visited Tijuana, Mexico, and talked to the workers about their inhumane treatment, including the 14-year-old rape victims who had been locked in the plant at night and raped by the foreman. This is what the Mexicans want to change by coming here, but this is the same treatment that bosses inflicted on all workers until we forced them to stop.

I told them about the way we were treated and what we did to change our situation. This move that the Delta Pride owners have made to hire the Mexican workers shows their desire to continue to keep all the workers under their thumb. We have to find a way as Black and Mexican workers to not lose control of our destiny. We must fight in unity to keep our humanity. The Delta Pride workers have to get the Mexican workers to focus on how we were treated in the past and get them to join forces with us as workers in unity to keep our dignity and respect.

—S. Hamer