If you have the pleasure of walking the polished, cracked cement floors of my warehouse at 4 a.m., you’d probably find it peaceful. Quiet. Perhaps even serene. You’d walk past the pallets of prepackaged and ultra-processed foods, beverages, and desserts unnoticed and unbothered. I can’t say the same for you if you were to take this jaunt just an hour later, at 5 a.m. You would be greeted by the hum of machines powered by electricity and air, their metallic cycle pushing corrugated boxes through the automated packing lines. You’d see forklifts zooming past, their constant beeping horns drilling your ear drums from every direction. You’d also hear tape machines, glue guns, automatic drills, kick out arms, beeping scales, and a Latin American singer, singing his heart out from a banged-up portable speaker. You’d see primarily Latino individuals performing nearly every task in the building, from packing snacks to managing employees. In my facility, the heart of efficiency lies in these individuals. Our workforce has very rarely seen a task they couldn’t accomplish. I’ve seen Guatemalans be raised 20 feet in the air on a pallet with a forklift for standard and basic inventory counts. I’ve seen Venezuelans who were completely illiterate in both English and Spanish do quick math on finished goods materials that I could barely do with a calculator. Not to mention the overtime-loving Mexican workers, willing to get hands, feet, and heads dirty. They will crawl through glass for time and a half and brush off the scrapes. And the tasks listed above weren’t even in the job description and absolutely aren’t expected of myself and their managers. This is the result of pride in your work, something that is easy to come by in my facility.
I’ve been working in the manufacturing industry for the better part of 10 years. I’ve very rarely encountered white Americans who can fill these positions. I’ve had a few apply, a couple hired, and zero last in my experience as a manager. I understand the jobs are laborious, as I did them myself through college. I’ve been a line worker, a truck unloader, a forklift driver, a supervisor, and now finally a plant manager. None of the jobs listed above would be considered an “easy” job. The winters are bitterly cold and the summers are swelteringly hot. Every day is a chaotic mess, requiring a rushed and sporadic shift on a moment’s notice, every moment.
America isn’t the same America it was when we manufactured our own goods with our own people. Factory workers don’t buy houses, cars, and laundry machines on their salary alone like we did in the 1950s. Most Americans now have debt of some kind, especially if they went to college. The American factory workers of today are immigrants, minorities, and “aliens.” Every industry, every factory, has illegal immigrants in their buildings, and they are lying if they say they don’t. The same workers who’ve never heard of OSHA are very familiar with ICE and their sweeping raids over the past few months. My business experienced a complete shutdown due the fear of ICE, who had been spotted in our small suburban Chicago town. Not a single worker, alien or not, showed up to work for an entire day. With fear growing in the American immigrant and alien populations’ minds, and an unrealistic push to use debt-stricken Americans to fill undesirable and difficult positions, what will America’s manufacturing sector look like in five years? Will white Americans suddenly take over the lower paying positions? Will deporting and shipping immigrants help America turn around and get back to its thriving 1950s self? No, none of that will happen. This is a modern-day, nationwide repatriation. And like the last Mexican Repatriation of the 1930s, we will see labor markets fail, jobs go empty for months, and supply chains disrupted for years to come. Despite my love for history and disdain for unplanned and uneducated change to entire sectors, my real fear is with the people I see every day. Although I too have debt and identify with other white Americans, the Hispanic population I’ve grown familiar with feels like my extended family. To see them filled with fear, despite their legal status, is quite unsettling. My own professional history is defined by the Hispanic and minority workers who taught me how to thrive at work. From dishwashing to cooking, from steak houses to factories, it was the minorities who taught me how to be a great worker, manager, and leader. There is no crying at the border solution that can derail the train we are currently on. Tariffs and soon-to-be-released signal chats of strikes on cartels in Mexico won’t help us come to a concrete solution. What the gesturing, posturing, and plain old pandering to combat the social justice warriors of 2014 will result in is a cataclysmic shutdown of supply chains that will thwart America’s progress. Perhaps, if we abandoned the deportation photo ops, shut down “Death Camp Barbie” town halls, and spent actual time on a production line with these people, we could respect and understand the workforce that powers America.
William Gross is a general manager of a food and beverage manufacturing company, originally from Memphis. He is a husband, a father, and a writer (when he finds the time).