Tennessee Residents Compete for Work They Once Scorned; An All-Night Wait for Slaughterhouse Shifts
Hard times recently drew scores of locals and immigrants to a cold sidewalk in this town, where they spent an anxious night waiting to compete for jobs in a slaughterhouse.
Burmese refugee Cho Aye traveled 60 miles from Nashville on a Thursday morning in late March to take a place at the head of the line outside Shelbyville’s state employment office. The next day, the office was to take applications for $9.35-an-hour jobs processing chicken at the local Tyson Foods plant. Directly behind Ms. Aye, sitting on blankets atop the concrete, were 16 more Burmese refugees who had come from as far away as Idaho and Florida.
“I don’t mind doing any kind of work,” Ms. Aye, a petite 22-year-old, said that evening as she settled into a reclining beach chair she bought at Goodwill….
