An endless stream of raw chickens -- thousands an hour -- had to be sliced and cut into pieces for family dinner tables.

It was Enrique Pagan's job to keep his part of the line running.

He paced and often screamed at the Mexicans and Guatemalans cutting chicken thighs. He demanded they move faster and scolded them when they left too much meat on the bone.

Enrique said most of his 90 workers in 2002 suffered hand and wrist pains.

But he had production goals to meet. And he knew that workers wouldn't complain because many were in the country illegally. "A lot of people didn't like me," he said.

Enrique had been hired in 1999 and promoted to supervisor about a year later when House of Raeford Farms' work force was in transition. By the early 2000s, Latinos had replaced most blacks on production lines. The company needed supervisors who could lead and speak Spanish. Enrique could do both.

He described himself as a loyal employee, but came to question company tactics. He would confront the pressure for profits in the billion-dollar poultry industry, and the suffering that resulted.

He acknowledges his bosses never told him to intimidate his fellow Latino workers, but they never reprimanded him for doing so. He says he didn't have a choice -- his job was at stake.

First impression

Enrique remembers the day he came to work. He had never seen anything like the Greenville chicken plant, known locally as Columbia Farms. It was almost the size of a soccer field.

Inside the plant, hundreds of Latinos stood inches apart, wielding knives, cutting up thousands of chickens a shift. It was cold, wet and noisy. Workers wore earplugs to protect their hearing from the clanking conveyor belts.

Enrique, then 47, and Lydia Torres, 34, left Puerto Rico, where they were U.S. citizens, to "echarse adelante" -- a Spanish phrase meaning to get ahead. The couple moved to Buffalo, but after working odd jobs for a few years relocated to Greenville, where a friend told them the climate was warm and jobs were plentiful.

They were among the growing number of Latinos who work in poultry plants throughout the Southeast, usually in the most dangerous jobs for the lowest pay.

Enrique had driven a bus in Puerto Rico and made $100 to $250 a week. Now, he could make $300 a week at the processing plant cutting wings and thighs.

He was quick with a knife and scissors. In just over a year, he was promoted to supervisor. That meant an extra $100 a week, he said. He would wear a hard hat signifying his new role as a boss.

Pressure to produce

Enrique's workers used knives and scissors to remove bones from chicken thighs. His department had to keep production between 150 and 160 birds a minute, about 70,000 a day, he remembers. No excuses.

If Enrique's workers fell behind, he made sure they caught up. If they could not finish in eight hours, they stayed overtime, he said.

Upper management in white hard hats pushed production managers in red hard hats who pushed supervisors, such as Enrique, in orange hard hats.

Latino workers were accustomed to their American bosses yelling at them. What really hurt, several said, was disparaging treatment by Latino supervisors who shared their background.

One Guatemalan, Miguel, said several supervisors treated fellow Latinos as if they were "desechables" or disposables. "They treat you like you're not human," said Miguel, who asked that his last name not be used for fear of losing his job.

Barry Cronic, House of Raeford's complex manager in Greenville, said in a written response that "our supervisors were never asked to use fear and intimidation against our employees."

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