Starting from Zero
With almost 400 foreign-born workers from 54 countries, Portland?s Barber Foods has assembled Maine?s most diverse workforce. For these refugees, the start of the American Dream is cold, loud, and full of promise.
By Abby Zimet, Photography by David A. Rodgers
In the chill and din a multihued army of workers, girded in hairnets, earplugs, blue rubber gloves, white coats bulky over jackets and sweatshirts, bends over a speeding conveyor belt. A deluge of chicken hurtles past them: chicken wings, sticks, cups, nuggets, fingers, blasters; chicken honey crunched and Cordon bleued and Kieved; chicken stuffed with pizza, bacon, asparagus, cheddar. Known here as "product," it ceaselessly swerves and veers along the belt like a protein-packed Tilt-A-Whirl. Blue hands flying, the workers deftly steer it to its cellophane fate.
