Exploitation & Cruelty
Wednesday, September 10th, 2008Great piece by Stephen Steinlight on the immigration raid on an Iowa meatpacking plant:
Some 389 illegal aliens were arrested there, half the workforce. Investigative journalism, an undercover operation and subsequent media coverage have revealed shocking, sordid conditions, with allegations of corporate inhumanity, illegality, and chicanery surfacing continually. There are numerous reports of barbarous working conditions, gruesome cruelty to animals, multiple infractions of workplace safety regulations, charges of sexual harassment of female workers, a spotlight on the lowest wages in the industry, accounts of cheating workers out of overtime pay (with shifts averaging 12-16 hours six days a week), and hundreds of violations of USDA health codes (250 in 2006 alone), with citations for inadequate protection against mad cow disease and multiple instances when fecal material was present in food-processing areas.
Most appalling, the State Commissioner of Labor has called upon the State Attorney General to seek maximum penalties under law for what he characterizes the “most egregious violations of every aspect of Iowa’s child labor laws.”
… Also conspicuously absent in the righteous indignation of some Post-American practitioners of “social justice” over the ICE raid in Postville is recognizing the disastrous impact of massive immigration by the un-educated and unskilled poor – legal or illegal – on America’s most vulnerable. It is ruinous to the unemployed, partially employed, working poor, recent legal immigrants, African Americans, elderly still working, young people entering the job market, and all of the working class with only a high school education.
H/T Krikorian/the Corner.
