June 2000

Country Select Catfish keeps migrants non-union

Indianola, Miss.—The owner of Country Select Catfish, Mr. Stevenson, brought more than 50 Mexican workers into Humphreys County and plans to bring in 100 more as soon as he renovates several buildings to house them. The community suspects he is using federal empowerment zone money that was supposed to be used in his facility to secure more jobs for the community, which is filled with unemployed workers.

The Mexicans will not be able to participate in the union or in negotiations for a new contract beginning in October, because Stevenson is leasing them through a work service. He keeps them for one year and then trades them for a new group. They aren't even letting the Mexican workers know that.

The workers at Country Select feel this move was made to slow the negotiations down and will have a tremendous effect on the union. The Black workers see this as the company trying to turn the Mexicans against the Blacks and the Blacks against the Mexicans.

The company is exploiting the Mexicans because they will do more work and work more hours for less money. For example, one Mexican man ripped his arm from the wrist halfway up his arm. He worked all day and didn't tell anyone because he was afraid they were going to send him back to Mexico. Finally he lost so much blood that they noticed he had hurt himself.

Country Select works four days, 10 hours a day, but they work the Mexicans every day, including Wednesday when other workers are off.

An Urban Institute study said more than 90% of new immigrants settle in urban areas where there is a high concentration of Blacks. That means that Black workers more and more find themselves in competition with immigrants and Country Select is taking advantage of that.

In the Mississippi Delta, catfish bosses know that over the past 15 years we Black single mothers have struggled to overcome the welfare lines and to organize against racism in our workplaces and for better treatment and benefits. It is because we have grown in that struggle that the company is bringing in workers to try to destroy that new way of thinking.

We know that workers, any workers, are abused to the fullest in the workplace. And we also know that the Mexican workers are treated even worse than us Blacks. That's why it's so important that we focus beyond unions, develop ourselves deeper and unite together as one voice to find that total revolution in permanence that we are searching for.

—S. Hamer