Meatpackers and Beef Barons: Company Town in a Global Economy
by Carol Andreas
Category: Business & Economics

Not since Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, published more than eighty years ago, has an author critically examined the internal machinations of the meatpacking industry while challenging widely held assumptions about labor struggle and capitalism. In Meatpackers and Beef Barons: Company Town in a Global Economy, sociologist Carol Andreas traces the development of the meatpacking industry in Greeley, Colorado. As a case study, Greeley is significant because modern beef-processing technology began here as a small family business and evolved into a division of one of the most lucrative and powerful corporations in the world: ConAgra, Inc. Andreas argues that a concentration of ownership in the multibillion-dollar beef industry has been accompanied by increased exploitation and injury to workers. Meatpackers and Beef Barons presents gripping testimony of meatpacking workers from Monfort, Inc. The experiences of these workers are placed in context of historical developments locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally. Some of the highly charged issues that are discussed include intimidation of workers, the replacement of union workers by nonunion immigrants, speed up of disassembly lines, strikes, plant closures, and company influence on legislation and law enforcement. Meatpackers and Beef Barons focuses on the restructuring of the production process in the red meat industry and the effect of the restructuring on women and men who work in meatpacking plants and on the communities in which they live. It explodes local myths about the beneficence of corporate "leadership" and examines the possibilities for change.