The Meat We Eat

"There was some cruel shit that went down there. Sometimes someone would fall asleep, you know, be standing there on the line, halfway awake. There was a pool of hot water, the pigs fell in there, helped to soften up the meat. They'd fall in and someone'd stick 'em in the neck and kill 'em, then they'd fall in the water before they started cutting. So this guy'd be standing down there by that pool, asleep on his feet, and Jerry'd go 'Psst! Hey!' to me, and point down at them.

"When the pig fell, Jerry'd stick 'em in the neck so it wouldn't die in that pool of water. It would die, but not in that pool of water. It sounds cruel, doesn't it? I know, I used to pray every night. So he'd stick 'em in the neck, and they'd drop into that pool of water. And that water was so hot that pig would come out of there looking like a monster, scare the shit out of whoever was standing there asleep.

"We used to make 18 dollars an hour some of us, good money for those days. We'd work 16 hour days sometimes. Man, I'd go cash my check, all the young guys'd be looking at me like 'Man where you work?' They thought it was a two week check. That was a one week check!

"When we went on strike, we stood in a line in front. There were people yelling, cursing. Some windshields got broken, tires flat, there at the beginning.

"That was when Labor World got started. That was the first temp place in the city.

"One of the guys, he was a nice guy, worked right next to me. They found a bunch of guns in his car, AK-47. He was standing there on the line with all that in his car. After that, they passed a law, only a certain number of people could stand on a line.

"Then they started letting temps in around back. Strike pay was 60 dollars and a bag of groceries every two weeks. Just enough to give you strength to walk the line for two weeks. I looked at that and said, man I'm outta here. I went somewhere else."