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ELIZABETH BAIER: Modern-day Austin was built on pork and you can't miss that. The Hormel plant's sprawling complex is just off Interstate 90. Inside a chain link fence topped with barbed wire are two lawn ornaments, one the statue of a pig, the other a giant can of Spam.

Mayor Tom Stiehm takes me on a mid-morning tour. His heavy set of keys jangles as he drives the tree-lined streets around the plant. The sharp smell of processed pork drifts into his car when he lowers the window to point out a house.

TOM STIEHM: I used to live in that house. Upstairs, it was all white. There wasn't that-- that was back in '89, '90, '91 and there wasn't a single Hispanic here.

It was all white. It was all working class white. I wouldn't say it's rundown anymore then. It was never one of the better areas in town.

ELIZABETH BAIER: Two decades ago Stiehm said it was just like thousands of rural towns across America, predominantly white and a solid mix of working and middle class laborers. Officially, the 1990 US Census counted just under 250 Latinos in Austin.

TOM STIEHM: There was not a Black family. There wasn't a Hispanic family. The closest we came was a couple of Polish families.

[LAUGHS]

Maybe some Italians.

ELIZABETH BAIER: By the year 2000, the number of Latinos jumped to more than 1,600. Within a decade, residents of this cozy town found themselves trying to understand who the new people were, where they were coming from, and why they were here. The meatpacking plant lured them with jobs. Stiehm remembers when he first realized his town was changing. He was a police officer sitting in a squad car with another officer.

TOM STIEHM: Probably late '80s, early '90s and about five or six Hispanics crossed the street. And of course, being from Austin, I said where are all these people coming from? And he said, they work at the plant. And I said, just to think we used to have the best-paid meat packers in the country. And he said, we still do.

ELIZABETH BAIER: The best-paid meatpacking jobs in the country did usher in a new workforce. Stiehm and others say one of the catalysts for the change in Austin began on a hot summer day 25 years ago when workers at the Hormel plant went on strike. The action attracted national media coverage.

SPEAKER 1: 1,100 or so rank-and-file members of Local P-9 met for less than an hour.

SPEAKER 2: Minnesota governor Rudy Perpich today called out the National Guard trying to help maintain order.

SPEAKER 3: Hormel officials and striking meat packers will meet with a fact finder later this morning in an attempt to break the deadlock over--

SPEAKER 4: Local P-9 has lost another major battle and maybe its long-running war as well.

ELIZABETH BAIER: The recession of the early 1980s increased competition among meat packers around the country. Many smaller companies went under. Others instituted wage cuts.

By 1985, Hormel felt pressure to remain competitive. When the company demanded a 23% wage cut, about 1,500 workers with the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, Local P-9, went on strike. Dan Bartel is one of the strike survivors. He was hired by Hormel in 1982 when he was 24 years old.

Bartel went on strike, but returned to the plant after six months. That's when the local union was ordered to call off the strike by the national leaders of the United Food and Commercial Workers. When the union members in Austin refused, Local P-9 was placed in receivership and taken over by the National Union. Bartel talks from his desk in the local union hall. He's the business agent for what's now called Local 9.

DAN BARTEL: It was a culture here that Hormel, the original Hormels that owned and run the business, took care of the people that did the work that took care of them. And my opinion, and this is solely my opinion, is Hormels turned their back on those people. It's a respect thing. And I think when you disrespect somebody that deeply, those wounds will linger forever.

ELIZABETH BAIER: Austin still has wounds although they're less conspicuous now. The 10-month strike devastated the city. Families stopped talking.

National Guard soldiers patrolled to keep the peace. And in this quiet community, red-faced screaming matches happened almost daily on the picket line. Bartel says people who lived through the strike are tired of it and don't want to remember.

DAN BARTEL: I'm a little reluctant to go back and rekindle feelings about the strike, I'm going to tell you that right now. Been a lot of healing going on in the last 25 years. And for what purpose does it serve to get folks feeling down and out again?

ELIZABETH BAIER: After the strike, Hormel hired new workers at lower wages. And a few years later, the company leased part of its Austin plant to a newly-created company called Quality Pork Processors or QPP. Officials with Hormel and QPP declined numerous interview requests for this story.

QPP took over the more dangerous cut and slaughter part of the business. Today, they process 19,000 hogs a day. All of the fresh meat from QPP goes on for processing at Hormel. QPP ushered in a new workforce of mostly single Mexican men who worked in the US and sent money back to their wives and children.

By the mid 1990s, Austin started to mirror meatpacking towns around the country. City officials say the immigrants were seen as a mixed blessing. They added to the population and labor supply, but created a slew of unanticipated concerns for the community. And for at least one group of former Hormel workers, it deepened the longing for what they call the old Austin.

SPEAKER 5: We're going to start with the Pledge of Allegiance.

ELIZABETH BAIER: It's Thursday morning. And just as they have for 25 years, a group of former P-9 union members gathers for coffee and donuts. Bumper stickers, caps, and pictures from their P-9 days decorate the meeting room. A giant American flag hangs from one wall.

SPEAKER 6: With liberty and justice for all. United we stand, divided we fall. Even P-9 fell all the way.

ELIZABETH BAIER: These men and women are in their 70s and 80s now. They were among the workers who never went back after the strike. The conversation quickly turns to the new workers and conditions in the plant.

SPEAKER 7: That guy says his granddaughter worked there one night on quality pork cleanup and she was the only white person there. And she says they were talking and gathering around all the time. She says I was scared. I just lasted one night and then I never went back. We sound like a bunch of racists down here, but we're not.

ELIZABETH BAIER: That's Vincent Maloney. He worked at Hormel for 38 years. Maloney considers himself part of old Austin. He'd do anything to return to what he sees as the city's pre-strike golden days.

Maloney is still angry at workers who crossed the picket line during the strike. He's also angry about the new workers who came later. And he acknowledges he doesn't like the daily bump and grind that comes from life in a more diverse city. In many ways, the changes make him feel unwelcome in his own town.

VINCENT MALONEY: In Austin, I walked through the parks every day. Weekends, the white person can't have can't go to the park anymore.

SPEAKER 8: Not at all.

VINCENT MALONEY: Not at all. We got about eight parks around town, small ones, big ones. The white man don't dare go out there.

The Mexicans got them all cornered. Yeah, what a mess. Do we get these pinatas? Beat the hell out of them?

ELIZABETH BAIER: Maloney and others thought the new workers would only be here for a little while before returning to Mexico. And Carole King wonders why the immigrants who've stayed and those who've brought their families from Mexico won't try harder to fit in.

CAROL KING: Everything is labeled here, making it easier for them to keep their language. Hy-Vee, the grocery store, they've got the Spanish names for the restrooms and they have the magazines that are printed in Spanish. I mean they just enable them to keep their language. I just think-- I think everyone would feel more accepting if they did try and blend into this.

ELIZABETH BAIER: Standing outside City Hall, Mayor Tom Stiehm says it's a challenge to be a leader of a city with so many parts that don't stitch together. He says one of his priorities has been to try to help the city redefine its identity.

TOM STIEHM: What I tell people is you don't have to it, but this is the future of Austin. And either you go with it-- or it's like trying to swim upstream sooner or later. It's going to happen so it's like the weather. I don't think there's anything you can do about it.

ELIZABETH BAIER: The changes in Austin reflect new realities about immigration. Rapid demographic shifts once seen only in border states and large urban areas have transformed main streets in rural cities and towns. Mayor Tom Stiehm says that's something Austin is still working hard to accept. Elizabeth Baier, Minnesota Public Radio News, Austin.