St. Cloud union leaders question move to bring in foreign workers

Last week, a divided St. Cloud City Council voted to allow a church to turn a former convent into a residential unit that will house international workers.

The move will allow 26 seasonal workers from Ukraine, the Philippines and Mexico to live at the church and work temporarily for poultry producer GNP company, previously known as Gold'n Plump.

The company said it's recruiting workers outside the United States because it couldn't find qualified candidates in the region willing to relocate who could fill the jobs at its Cold Spring plant.

However, local union officials question GNP's intention.

"It's a challenge when companies have to look outside of the United States to get workers when we already have people who are settled in the community [looking for jobs]," said Ahmed Ali, a St. Cloud resident and lead organizer with the Greater Minnesota Worker Center.

Ali said he's afraid that the move may ultimately displace local workers, especially immigrant communities who start their first jobs in the poultry industry. Another problem is that locals can't apply directly to the company, he added. GNP said it uses staffing agencies to recruit new employees.

The company has partnered with a private, nonprofit agency called Workforce Development Systems, LLC. based in Fergus Falls to find the foreign workers. The first group will arrive on Feb. 1, and will move into a property owned by the Church of St. Anthony of Padua.

This is the first time GNP is turning to overseas workers. In 2014, GNP's annual sales were more than $450 million. Over the last two years, the company has produced marketing campaigns in St. Cloud and central Minnesota, participated in job fairs, and partnered with high schools to recruit new employees, said Tim Wensman, executive vice president for GNP. When GNP couldn't fill its openings through those efforts, it decided to recruit workers from overseas.

"We are accepting applications for these jobs now, from anybody now who wants to apply," he said. "All they need are the skills that we're asking for, and we're ready to go." Those skills include basic English and basic math. For employees with limited English proficiency, GNP offers work training and language classes at its work-sites. For those without cars, working night shifts, the company offers shuttle services at two different pick-up locations in St. Cloud for $5 a day, round trip.

"We're providing transportation to and from the St. Cloud community to the Cold Spring plant to make sure that there's availability to travel back and forth," Wensman said.

At last week's St. Cloud City Council meeting, a council member asked the church's business manager Peggy Arseneau who would supervise the 26 diverse foreign workers on its property.

"It's most likely somebody who's done this before, on a temporary visa," she said. "They're responsible for what happens. They don't want to lose their job, so they're going to do a good job on it."

GNP plans to pay the church about $4,000 a month through October to house the foreign workers. And in subsequent years, the next group of guest workers will arrive around the first of the year and stay through October, according to a church document.

But none of this makes sense to Ali, the lead organizer with the Greater Minnesota Worker Center. He said he knows qualified Somalis and Muslims who have applied, but didn't get hired.

"They said they advertised for jobs but I haven't seen where they advertised," he said. "I live in St. Cloud, and I have been living in St. Cloud for a very long time. And I read very extensively. I haven't seen any job ads in St. Cloud Times or any local media organizations that I follow, the radios, so I don't see where they advertise. I don't think the company has been honest about that."

Ali said bringing in foreign workers will have repercussions at the plant, but he's also concerned about how GNP will treat the 26 workers.

"They want to get workers that they can pay less, and force them to do more, people who don't understand the system, people who don't understand the culture," he said. "People who have very few protections, people who they can exploit basically."

In a statement, GNP said the average starting wage for international workers will be $12.36, the same as workers hired locally, plus benefits. And depending on the shifts and responsibilities, some employees may get more or less than $14 an hour. Job responsibilities are the same for both groups: trimming and cutting chicken, general production of poultry products. The company says this is an excellent opportunity for foreign workers to learn valuable new skills that they will take back to their countries when they leave.

City council vice president John Libert, who voted for the zoning amendment, sees the matter as simply a zoning issue and not a debate over who is filling local jobs. Libert said he doesn't think there's going to be a downside to GNP paying the church of St. Anthony to house seasonal workers in what most recently was an un-used building.

"We're dealing with a church that wants to take a vacated property, get it back into working condition, make some money on it, refurbish the building on it," he said.

But fellow City Council member Carol Lewis said the city council's 4-3 vote will have "far reaching implications."

"What's the motivation for not being able to find 26 workers?" she said. "It's hard for me to believe that there aren't 26 people in this community who can fill those position. The St. Cloud area has a low wage already. We really cannot afford to lose any more ground on wages in this community."

Lewis said she fears the unemployment rate among minority groups will increase further if other companies duplicate GNP's move.

"By statute we are supposed to be taking into account, the health and welfare and well-being of the community when we make these decisions," she said. "And I do not think that council members did that. They thought this was just a very simple up or down vote. And that's not the case."

Jane Conrad, a union organizer with the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, said GNP's program will have a ripple effect in St. Cloud.

"It's kind of opening a Pandora's box that we really shouldn't be going down," she said. "When you have guest workers coming in from out of the area, they're not staying here, they're not invested in the community, the way those that live here are. And when we have the poverty rate that we have currently right now, we need everything we can get in this community."