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husband, Reuben, and their four children.
There is no national minimum wage in
Mexico. The closest thing is the one estab
lished in Mexico City, where last year work
ers were supposed to make at lef c# $3.42 a
day. The sum is a decent one compared to
the money brought in by rural laborers.
Ortia, who is a supervisor at Fresh Frozen
Foods, said that when she got to Athens, the
prospect of working at a poultry plant was
more appealing than working in the fields as
a migrant worker, as she had done for years.
Not that it was easy, Ortia said.
•■There were days when me and Reuben
didn’t eat because the kids haa to eat,” Ortia
said. “And the chicken factory, oh God, after
a while 1 hated it — it was so hard, but it was
a job.”
Even without reading newspaper business
sections it’s easy for anybody looking for
employment to sense the reality of economic
indicators, said Mark Watson, senior market
analyst for the Georgia Department of Labor
in Atlanta. “If you’ve got low unemployment
numbers, most people look at the environ
ment and say, ‘Wow, there’s a lot of work
there,’" Watson said.
“There’s good giowth [in Northeast
Georgia] right now that’s resulting in a lot of
opportunities."
Paul Miller, director of economic develop
ment for the Athens-Clarke County Economic
Development Authority, said the county is an
excellent example of the region's growth.
“Hispanics are being attracted here
because we have the lowest unemployment
rate of any county in the state," Miller said.
“They tend to locate where there are jobs,
and as long as this growth is fueled by
demand for products, the trend will continue
that there are more and more Hispanics in
the workplace.”
The logistics of his prediction take place
seven nights a week, as a van drops off and
picks up people in Lont of Infiniti Hair Salon
on Atlanta Highway. From there it make* its
way to Atlanta, where buses for the Hispanic
company El Expresso come and go from 59
Mexican cities and towns.
Whether it be working legally for mini
mum wage or taking cash under the table,
U.S. wages are all the reason many immi
grants need to cross the border, Ortia said.
“Most come here to help their families in
Mexico, because over there they don’t have
a chance,” Ortia said.
A month and a half ago, Juan 3ehena
heeded the call, traveling the long 2,634
miles from Mexico City tc Athens.
“A friend told me Georgia is a very good
state to go to for work,” Behena said, as he
watched chicken frying in a homemade fryer
in his neighbor’s yard at Garnett Ridge this
past Saturday. “It was very easy to find a job
— I had one the same week I got here.”
PRESUMING A CRUNCH
It doesn’t matter what the ethnicity of the
migrant labor is, Barrow said. Whenever
there is an “explosion of growth” in working
poor, it has the potential to drive the “indige
nous cheap labor” out of jobs and alienate
the middle class, Barrow said.
The top two employers in the manufactur
ing industry — the area’s third largest non-
agricultural sector outside of government —
for Athens-Clarke County last year were
Seaboard Farms and Gold Kist, both poultry
plants that hire a significant amount of
Hispanics. Although the human resources
departments at both companies declined to
give exact figures, Melissa Sexton, hiring
coordinator for Seaboard Farms, said her
company brings in 10 new Hispanic employ
ees a week.
The two companies are located in North
Athens, near where most of the recent
Hispanic immigrants live. That sort of clus
tering of low wage workers has some in the
community worried.
Susan Mogford, president of the Athens
Apartment Association and director of oper
ations for Sterling Resources, the company
that owns the College Place and University
Gardens apartment complexes, said she has
noticed more apartments in the Athens area
being rented to families of transient workers.
“It goes back to oversaturation of the mar
ket,” Mogford said. “You’ve got to rent to
whoever you can, and these days you can’t
be as selective in who you rent to."
Before the Athens Clarke County
Commission passed its single family zone
housing ordinance, many Athens apartments
were home to 20 or 25 immigrants, Bell said.
“They would sleep on the floor in sleeping
bags, just laying down anywhere they could
find a space,” Bell said.
It’s still not an uncommon occurrence for
10 Mexicans to be living in a trailer home
when they first get here, said Magda Ventura,
a Peruvian who moved to Athens in 1982 and
is now the owner of Infiniti Hair Salon.
None of the apartment complexes con
tacted reported experiencing the trend
directly, but management personnel at most
of them said they have seen it happen at
other properties.
Athens should avoid “a system that sucks
in a huge inflow of labor that will compete
with the folks that are already here,” Barrow
said. “The people coming in are sending their
money elsewhere instead of those who have
been here for six or seven generations.”
Bell said that type of thinking is, at best,
misguided.
“We’ve been accused of taking jobs from
everybody," Bell said. “In reality, we aren’t
taking jobs from anybody — we are taking
the jobs that nobody wants, and I don’t care
what nationality you are, if you need to feed
your family, you’re going to take whatever
you can get.”
Michael Thurmond, a former head of the
Department of Family and Children’s
Services and a candidate for state labor com
missioner, said the influx of labor is attribut
able to a scarcity of labor in the region that
has made for a “tight” labor situation in
which the supply of workers has thinned.
“The bottom line is with such a tight labor
market nobody has any place complaining
about those who are willing to take jobs,”
Thurmond said. “Competition is healthy for
the economy.”
The reason for Hispanics coming to
Athens is elementary, Ventura said.
“If 1 find a place where 1 can get a job, I say
‘OK, this is a good place,’ and then I call my
friend in New York and say, ‘Why aren’t you
coming here? There’s so many good jobs —
three chicken plants — and you can stay
with me until you can find a place,’” Bell said.
This scenario has happened to such an
extent that some Hispanics who moved here
three or four years ago are being displaced
by the near-constant waves of incoming
workers.
After arriving in Athens in 1995, Jose
Garcia, a native of Guerrero, Mexico who
moved here from California, had no trouble
finding work.
But these days, perched on a sofa in front
of his house in north Athens, Garcia said
times are rougher. Since losing his last job,
he’s been unable to find another one during
the past month.
“When I first got here, there weren’t many
Latinos, but now everyday there’re more
arriving from all over,” Garcia said. (Tom
Lasseter)
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SEPTEMBER 16, 1998 FLAGPOLE B