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Issue link: https://loumag.epubxp.com/i/842307
LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 7.17 69 Current BNA president Nick Johnson maintains a more open attitude toward JBS than his predecessor, which means talking face-to-face versus through lawyers. He thinks it will take corporate interests, not city action, to get JBS to move. But he does hope Butchertown will continue to become more artsy and does ask, "Do any of their workers even live in this neighbor- hood?" e answer: not really. "People think we can move the plant to the West End," Cliff says, "but it's not that simple." He thinks if the company moves, it'll probably be out of Kentucky. Twelve hundred jobs lost. "I think that some day in the future this building will become more expensive to upkeep and repair than it will be to move the whole operation," he says, referencing how other plants operate on one level versus the Louisville plant's three stories. "I predict the company will decide that it's time to consolidate, then move on." If faces were flags, the production line would look like the colorful cloths flapping outside a United Nations building. "e meatpacking industry, throughout history, has been the landing spot for new immigrants and refugees," Wallin says. "Our business is hard work. It's dangerous work. You have to have that mindset of 'I'm escaping, improving, giving my family a chance.' People who think 'Oh, gee, people come here from another country to go on welfare' have never worked beside these people." Communication can be tough, with fre- quent calls to a translation hotline. ere's no priority to put those who speak the same language next to each other on the line, though sometimes you'll see similar cultures coupled up. ere's the learned "sign language" — for example, flapping your hand upward means "come up on the cut" (you're cutting off too much fat). One ex-military employee says, "It's kind of like charades and I'm not good at charades." It's common to hear names of countries yelled. "Yo, Africa!" "Hey, Russia!" An HR guy says, "We try to discourage that, but it's like a camaraderie." e world in one place, and there's Petra Cruz, her voice sweet like the music on the plaza in Michoacán, Mexico, where she would walk after Sunday mass. ose warm nights, under the twinkle of street lamps and stars. e women would walk on one side, guys on the other. "Te acompaño?" the men would say. Can I accompany you? is is how she met her husband, who is now a supervisor at JBS. When Cruz was 21, they crossed the Tijuana border together. Now 44, she is a trainer (orange hat) who watches the newbies (gold hats) to make sure they're correctly sharpening their knives and making cuts. She'll walk around the cut floor, ask, "How do you feel? Do you need anything? Any pain?" Every second something old, every sec- ond something new for Kennedy Setik, a big guy from a tiny place called Pohnpei, in the Pacific archipelago of the Federated States of Micronesia. Fresh loin coming down the cut floor line and the same old motions he's done for four years as a rib puller. At first it was hard to keep up with the sweaty speed of the line, to correctly sharpen his hoop blade — which he glides between rib bones and back meat — between each new loin. Second nature now. "I'm going to sharp it, steel it, then get ready to pull. All within five to 10 seconds. I'm a professional," Setik says. He daydreams on the line about taking his baby son to Pohnpei, though the trip home is so expensive. He'll dream of opening a hip-hop club. Or of college, which he didn't complete. He'll imagine citizenship. He'll think about his weight, his sore ankles. A diet — dropping fried foods, soda, ribs. "(Ribs) used to be my favorite, but I guess working with it every day…" he says. "It has the same smell when you buy it. Open it and it's the same thing I've been smelling all week." He remembers when he moved to Ameri- ca he was five-foot-five, but then he grew to five-eight, like magic. "ey say when you come here, you are doing work that less strains your body. You start growing," he says, remembering days spent bent on tobacco farms as a kid. "Your body is free." Mai Lam's life is work. In Vietnam it was ocean fishing and vegetable farm- ing. In Louisville, she starts bagging the tenderloins or folding boxes at 6:30 a.m. and never really knows when the day will end — overtime bridging into dinnertime. Weekends? Work. Mai Lam at the nail salon, cutting and buffing and beautifying. "I told you, I don't have no time for fun!" Lam says, her makeup prim and proper, her bangs styled deliberately across her forehead, an aura of Chanel Coco Made- moiselle perfume surrounding her. She is in her 40s but looks younger, saying, "I came here and people say, 'You must have started at JBS when you were 10 years old!'" Her life is $14.95 an hour. It's for the children: two she's putting through college and the youngest, who's still in high school. "I take care of them first and don't worry about myself," she says. It's for her family still in Vietnam, including a young- er brother who's sick and unable to work. She took the nail job to send him money. She spent $10,000 on plane tickets for her family of five to go to her parents' funerals in South Saigon. She hasn't been back in seven years. Marta Boumegne trims necks on the kill floor. All of the dance she inherited from Cameroon is still inside of her; the beat that starts in her chest, her arms rising upward. She dances, remembering the first paycheck she held in her hands — the first time holding money, her money. She gig- gles and claps. "Nine-eighty-five an hour! Woo! at's big money! I went to the mall to buy stuff for me!" Her floors no longer dirt. Water in the sink instead of a three- hour walk through fields.