Meatpacking Didn't Always Have Bad Pay

The NYT Magazine has an interesting piece on Postville, Iowa, a small town whose major employer is a meatpacking plant. Postville gained notoriety in 2008 because of a raid on the plant by immigration authorities that resulted in dozens of undocumented workers being arrested and deported.

At one point the article notes the low pay and bad working conditions in the industry and explains that only immigrants would be willing to take these jobs. Actually the pay in the meatpacking industry was n...