VERNON, Calif. — Teresa Robles starts her shift at dawn most days at her pork processing plant in an industrial area four miles south of downtown Los Angeles. She spends her eight hours on her feet to cut her stomach. Not only does this repetitive motion keep her joints aching constantly, but it also earns her $17.85 an hour to support her family.
So when rumors began circulating among the 1,800 workers in early June that the facility would soon close, Robles, 57, hoped it was just rumors.
“But it was true,” she solemnly said at the end of a recent shift.
The 436,000-square-foot factory, which has roots dating back nearly a century, is scheduled to close early next year. Smithfield Foods, the owner of the Virginia-based company, said it would be cheaper to supply the region from a plant in the Midwest than to continue operating here.
“Unfortunately, the high cost of doing business in California has compelled us to make this decision,” Smithfield CEO Shane Smith said, citing utility bills and voter-approved pig production. The law regulating the breeding method was mentioned.
Workers and company officials see greater economic lessons in the impending shutdown. They just differ in what it is. For Ms. Robles, it’s proof that, despite years of often dangerous work, “we’re being thrown away by them.” .
The cost of doing business in California has long been a point of contention. It was mentioned last year when Tesla, the successful electric car maker in Silicon Valley, announced it would move its headquarters to Texas. “There is a limit to how much we can grow in the Bay Area,” said Tesla CEO Elon Musk, citing housing prices and long commutes.
Like many economic debates, this one can take on a partisan tint.
Around the time Tesla pulled out, a report from Stanford University’s conservative Hoover Institution reported an accelerated exit from the California-based company. According to the report, 74 headquarters moved out of California in the first six months of last year. According to the report, in 2020 he found 62 companies relocated.
Dee Dee Meyers, a senior adviser to Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, countered by pointing to California’s continued economic growth.
“Every time this story comes up, it’s consistently disproved by facts,” said Myers, director of the governor’s Business and Economic Development Office. U.S. gross domestic product grew at a 2% annual pace over his five-year period to 2021, while California’s grew 3.7%, according to Myers’ office. The state is still the technology capital of the country.
Still, California’s manufacturing industry is declining faster than the country as a whole. Since 1990, the state has lost a third of his factory jobs. It currently employs about 1.3 million people, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Nationwide, it is down 28%.
The Smithfield factory is a symbol of California’s industrial heyday. In 1931, Los Angeles-raised brothers Bernie and Frances Clarherty, sons of Irish immigrants, started a meat processing business that soon settled in Vernon. Their company, later branded as Farmer John, became a household name in Southern California and was known for producing sizzling beloved Dodger his dog and pastor in backyard cooking. During World War II, the company fed US troops in the Pacific.
Nearly 20 years later, Hollywood set painter Les Grimes was commissioned to create a mural for the factory. It has become a tourist destination.
More recently, it has also been a symbol of social and political turmoil in the state.
In explaining Smithfield’s decision to close the factory, Chief Executive Officer Smith and other company officials pointed to Proposition 12, the 2018 statewide ballot measure. Allows you to move more freely.
The measure is not yet in force and will be challenged in the U.S. Supreme Court this fall. That’s how it plans to feed the market — in any case, company officials say the move reflects California’s unfavorable climate for pork production.
At times, the frenzy erupted outside the factory as animal rights activists condemned the confinement and treatment of pigs slaughtered inside the factory. Protesters serenaded pigs with snouts sticking out of the slats of arriving trucks and offered them water.
In addition to opposing Proposition 12, Smithfield argues that the utility bills for producing pork in California are nearly four times more expensive per head than the company’s other 45 plants nationwide. but did not disclose how they reached that conclusion. Quote.
John Grant, president of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 770, which represents Ms. Robles and other workers at the plant, said Smithfield’s announcement of the closure was due to the two companies beginning negotiations for a new contract. He said it was just before
“It was a complete stomachache and, frankly, a shock,” said Grant, who worked at a factory in the 1970s.
He said wage increases were a priority for unions to enter into negotiations. The company offered his $7,500 bonus to remaining employees until closing and increased his hourly wage from $19.10, his highest ever, to $23.10. (Rates at the company’s unionized Midwest factory are still a little higher.)
But Grant said the factory closure was an insult to members who survived the pandemic as essential workers. Smithfield was fined nearly $60,000 by California regulators in 2020 for failing to take appropriate steps to protect its employees from contracting the coronavirus.
“After what employees have been doing all through the pandemic, are they suddenly going to run away? They’re taking lives,” Grant said, adding that unions are working to find new jobs for workers. He added that he wanted to help find a buyer for the factory.
Karen Chapple, a professor of urban and regional planning at the University of California, Berkeley, said the closure was an example of “a greater trend toward industrialization” in areas like Los Angeles. “From an efficiency standpoint, it probably doesn’t make sense to be here,” she said. “It’s the end of a long journey.”
In fact, according to state data, the number of food manufacturing jobs in Los Angeles County has fallen 6% since 2017.
As those jobs disappear, workers like Mr. Robles wonder what’s next.
More than 80% of Smithfield factory employees are Latino, immigrants and first-generation natives. Most are over the age of 50. Safety and benefits keep people in jobs, but the nature of the work makes it difficult to recruit younger workers with better alternatives.
On a recent gloomy morning, Vernon’s air smelled strongly of ammonia. Workers entered the factory wearing surgical masks, goggles and helmets. The sound of a forklift echoes through the high fence.
The streets of this area are lined with huge warehouses. Some are vacant. Others wholesale local baked goods and candies.
Robles started working at the Smithfield plant four years ago. For her 20+ years, she ran a small business selling produce in downtown Los Angeles. She loved her job, but when her brother died in 2018, it was her brother’s wish to have her body shipped from Southern California to her hometown of Colima, Mexico. She needed money to honor She sold her business for thousands of dollars, then she started working in a factory and her hourly wage was $14 for her.
“I was proud,” she said, recalling her first few months at her new job.
Ms. Robles is the sole provider for her family. Her husband has several health complications, including surviving a heart attack in recent months, so she’s currently taking out her $2,000 mortgage on her home in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. is responsible for the payment of Her 20-year-old son, who recently started working in a factory, sometimes helps her with her expenses.
“But this is my responsibility. It’s my responsibility to provide,” she said.
For years, Robles said the Lord’s Prayer every night before bed.
“They are kicking us out with no answer,” she said.
Other workers like Mario Melendez, 67, who has worked at the factory for 10 years, share that sense of insecurity.
It’s an honor to know that his labor helps feed people all over Southern California.
However, the factory is also where he contracted the coronavirus, infecting his brother who died of the virus as did his mother. he was devastated.
“It’s a terrible shock,” said Melendez, who feels betrayed by the company.
So is Leo Velázquez.
He started working the night shift in 1990, making $7 an hour wrapping and sealing bacon. A few years later he moved to Days and worked 10 hour shifts.
“I gave my life to this place,” said Velázquez, 62.
Over the years, his body began to wear out. In 2014, he underwent shoulder replacement surgery. Still, he hoped to continue working at the factory until his retirement.
“It won’t happen,” he said. “I don’t know where it goes from here.”