April 11, 2003

'The Maya of Morganton: Work and Community in the Nuevo New South'

By NINA C. AYOUB

Starting around 1989, hundreds of Guatemalan laborers, almost all Highland Maya Indians, began migrating to the town of Morganton, N.C., to fill a chronic labor shortage at Case Farms, a local poultry plant. As they quickly learned, poultry processing blends the worst of many realms of work. It tends to be dirty, dangerous, exhausting, and low paid. More specific complaints followed: among them, speedups on the line, uncompensated hours, refusals to schedule adequate bathroom breaks, and the

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