Letter: Meat-packing jobs should go to U.S. citizens

Thursday, Dec. 27, 2001 | 8:29 a.m.

Regarding the Sun's Dec. 21 editorial, "More than just Tyson is at issue":

Your call for improving the salaries and working conditions in this nation's meatpacking plants misses an important point.

Until the industry broke the unions in the 1980s, these jobs were prized by American citizens who, after years of struggle, were rewarded with a respectable middle-class standard of living and a safer working environment.

Has it occurred to anyone that because of our government's refusal to enforce its own immigration laws, which includes severely punishing companies who hire illegals aliens, we have returned to the very same dangerous working conditions that Upton Sinclair attacked in his novel, "The Jungle"?

By all means, do the humane thing and raise wages and upgrade safety procedures within these plants, but give those jobs back to American citizens whose hard-won improvements virtually disappeared when the industry began backing up its buses at the Mexican border.

DAVE GORAK Executive director, Midwest Coalition to Reduce Immigration Villa Park, Ill.

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