The Jungle, revisited

By Kathy G.

If you read only one thing today, please let it be Tom Frank's column on the recent immigration bust of AgriProcessors, an Iowa meat-packing plant. Working conditions at the plant were nothing less than hellish; inspectors uncovered 39 violations of worker safety laws and 57 illegally employed children. Underaged employees reported working for as long as 17 hours a day, six days a week. There were other serious violations as well. Employees worked  with hazardous chemicals and prohibited, and unsafe, tools; were forced to pay for their own protective clothing; and frequently were paid less than minimum wage. The Des Moines Register reports that one worker was promised

a bonus and a free month's rent to come. But the paycheck for his first week's work totaled $8.61. Deductions listed on his pay stub included rent and payment on a loan he says he never took out. He also said he'd been paid for 34.5 hours of work when he actually worked 48 hours. Another worker told the Register he had received no training and most of his pay was also withheld.

There have long been problems with the plant. According to the Register, "Accidents that led to partial amputations of three workers' hands in 2005 resulted in only $7,500 in state fines."

Indeed, the pathetically low amount of the fine employers had to pay speaks volumes about what is wrong here. Indeed, as Frank reports, the massive labor law violations uncovered in the wake of the immigration bust set back AgriProcessors only $42,750 in fines (an amount reduced from the original, and still ridiculously paltry, sum of $182,000 ).

When plants like AgriProcessors go uninspected and labor law violations go undiscovered, employers have no incentive to provide even the bare minimum of safety and fair treatment to their employees. Especially when the fines for violations that are discovered are so pitifully small, employers making a simple cost/benefit decision will decide it is in their interest to violate the law.

Who's responsible for this outrageous state of affairs? Tom Frank pins the blame right where it belongs: on conservatives. He cites a recent  op-ed published in the Washington Times by conservative leader Paul Weyrich, in which he lauds Elaine Chao's Labor Department as having "the best record of accomplishment of anyone in the Bush administration." After all, Chao has cracked down on labor unions and held the line against card check. Who could ask for anything more, right?

But I would hazard a guess, dear reader, that unless you're some kind of amoral, sociopathic freak, you're not exactly proud of a country of where, with impunity, employers force children to work 17-hour days, employees regularly get cheated out of their hard-earned wages, and losing body parts is shrugged off as the price of doing business. What do we need to reverse this appalling state of affairs?

Well, first and foremost, we need unions. As Frank points out, unions are an indispensable institution that keeps the pressure on and fights for the rights of all workers, not just union members. Changes in labor law such as card check, which would make it easier to organize, are crucial.

Secondly, we need federal bureaucrats who will actually do the job they're supposed to do and enforce laws that look out for workers' interests.

Thirdly, we need to step up workplace inspections. In practice, this will mean hiring more civil servants and devoting more resources to our pathetically defunded regulatory agencies.

Fourthly, we need to change the law, so that employers who violate labor standards will get off with more than just a slap in the wrist. They need to know that if they're caught breaking the law, it will hurt. Fines of just a few thousand dollars are not gonna cut it.

Fifthly, we need immigration law reform that includes a general amnesty and a path to citizen for undocumented workers. A big part of the reason AgriProcessor was able to screw over so many workers so hard for so long is that their workforce mostly consisted of undocumented immigrants. Frank writes that their employer:

. . . had them over a barrel. Many of them were illegal immigrants, had probably borrowed money to come to Iowa, and consequently were "very malleable," in the words of University of Northern Iowa anthropologist Mark Grey, an expert on the local meatpacking industry. "They're at the mercy of whomever's going to hire them. They're at the mercy of their employer, at the mercy of the immigration authorities. You're going to do what the boss says or they'll turn you in to la migra [border patrol]."

Now, to implement all those policies -- labor law reform, immigration reform, better bureaucrats, more resources for inspections, tougher sanctions on employers who violate labor standards -- two things are vital. One is more and better Democrats, including a Democratic president, a Democratic House, and a filibuster-proof Democratic majority in the senate. The Republicans have shown, time and again, that their only fealty is to their corporate overlords. They cannot be trusted, ever, to look out for the interests of ordinary Americans. Their heart's desire is to drag American labor relations back to the 19th century, and that project is well on its way to succeeding.

But vanquishing the Republicans, alas, is only half the task at hand. The other crucial part of the equation is keeping the pressure on Democrats to do the right thing. As we've seen time and again, with the bankruptcy bill, with FISA, with the deregulation of the financial services industry in which Democrats enthusiastically participated, Democrats, at this point, are often more a part of the problem than they are a part of the solution. This is why we need an independent movement that, while it makes strategic alliances with Democrats, is also something separate and apart from them.

Though vastly superior to the Republicans in every way, Democrats, in and of themselves, are unlikely to make the changes we so desperately need. The Clinton administration showed us that much. But Democrats in combination with a mass movement -- be it the labor movement, in FDR's day, or the civil rights movement in the time of LBJ -- now that is the way to get things done, as history has shown.

UPDATE: David Neiwert has more. Hint: it's even worse than you thought.

Comments

[joelz]

This reminds me of a This American Life story about an Oklahoma plant using cheap labor from India on American soil.
http://thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=1220

I'm a bit sceptical about your claim that

"Especially when the fines for violations that are discovered are so pitifully small, employers making a simple cost/benefit decision will decide it is in their interest to violate the law."

What I have a hard time imagining is that it is ever a "simple cost/benefit decision" that leads to horrid situations as the one above. Is it ever the case that a board of directors have two flowcharts in front of them: one showing the bottom line if they don't follow the law, the other showing the bottom line if they follow the law. I just don't think people justify such obvious breaches of the law simply because it's more profitable. Moreover, in horrible cases such as the one above, I especially don't think that people justify such immoral/inhuman treatment of other human beings simply because it is more profitable.

For example, in the TAL documentary it is obvious that the Oklahoma plant owners were not only concerned about profit, but they seemed to honestly believe that what they were doing was a *morally applaudable act*. I think someone mentioned that the plant owner justified paying less than minimum wage the Indian workers because without employment from the plant, the workers would be starving in India (that's what the plant owner thought at least).

What I'm getting at I guess is that if it is not simple cost/benefit decisions that are responsible for these situations, then simple solutions such as increased fines will not be enough to prevent situations such as this from arising in the first place.

[Barry]

"is it ever the case that a board of directors have two flowcharts in front of them: one showing the bottom line if they don't follow the law, the other showing the bottom line if they follow the law."

Of course not. That would be stupid.

A question back to you- do you think that upper management did not know what was going on, and what money was being saved?

When they said that they were 'shocked! shocked!', did you believe them?

[Sir Charles]

Jesus, Joel -- are you fucking kidding me?

Not to blogwhore (but Kathy will forgive me), but read this:

http://www.cogitamusblog.com/2008/08/the-war-on-the.html

This kind of exploitation is everywhere in this society. People engage in it for a simple reason -- Greed. The notion that boards of directors and employers do not make cost-benefit decisions about obeying the law is absolutely fatuous and criminally naive.

[Low Key]

I once saw a secretly filmed seminar in which a management-side labor lawyer explained exactly how to make these cost-benefit calculations. Happens all the time.

[Jill]

Kathy, This is great - and like you I am skeptical of the Dems willingness to actually solve the problems unless we have a huge movement committed to making them do so. I'd be very appreciative if you would cross post this over at http://www.lavidalocavore.org so we can get some discussion going around this on there. I'll gladly front page it if you do.

[dmbeaster]

Remember this story next time someone repeats that nonsense about how "Americans won't do the jobs that illegals will do."

Which in a perverse sense is true, provided you add the caveat at that pay and with those working conditions.

And yes, Joel, businesses everywhere constantly make the cost-benefit calculation regarding law breaking. One of the consequences of the conservative policy lax enforcement is more rampant lawbreaking.

[luko]

I think I just lost my appetite for anything but rice and carrots. Thanks for the post. Makes me very sad.

Regards.

[swampcracker]

Is it ever the case that a board of directors have two flowcharts in front of them: one showing the bottom line if they don't follow the law, the other showing the bottom line if they follow the law.

This “tisk-tisk” skepticism is so naïve, it insults my intelligence. The cost/benefit analysis of whether to obey the law or pay the fine is standard operating procedure across a wide range of industries.

In Florida, for example, building contractors and developers choose to “pay the fine.” Why? The market is driven by buyers who will pay premium prices for land with a water view, and developers will routinely clear-cut protected habitats to offer this "view" and pocket the premium. The fine for violating state environmental protection laws is a tiny fraction of the value of "land with a view."

Wildlife mitigation is another exercise in chicanery and corruption. Developers pay a $50,000 mitigation fee for the right to bulldoze tortoises in their burrows. Ostensibly, collected fees pay for wildlife relocation or conservation in other locales, but the Catch 22 of wildlife mitigation is that the state legislature raids conservation funds to fill gaps in budget shortfalls. Ergo: Habitat destruction without mitigation.

Lets not be naïve about the amount of greed and corruption unleashed by conservative policies whose credo is “less government regulation” but whose hidden agenda is “pirating and profiteering” regardless of who gets hurt.

[Liz]

Companies are often fined much more for environmental violations than for dangerous workplaces.

For instance, after BP's Texas City refinery exploded, killing 15 workers, the company agreed to pay a $50 million fine under the Clean Air Act, but only $21.6 million for violations of workplace health and safety standards.

The Protecting America's Workers Act, introduced by Kennedy in the Senate and Woolsey in the House, would increase penalties for certain OSHA violations.

http://thepumphandle.wordpress.com/2007/10/29/clean-air-act-penalties-at-bp-two-times-osha-fines/

[NoMoreBlatherDotCom]

I've heard good things about Kathy G, but then I finally come to one of her posts and I read things like "we need immigration law reform" and I realize that people were raving about her for something other than her thinking abilities.

"Reform" will send a loud and clear message that anyone who comes here and stays for a while will eventually get citizenship. Millions upon millions will respond to that by trying to come here, and many of them will make it.

And, "reform" will give a tremendous amount of power to the far-left, racial power groups, business groups, the MexicanGovernment, and the like. They'll use that additional power to do what they do now: work against enforcement.

The groups that are pushing "reform" now will work against the enforcement parts of that "reform" later.

All of that will lead to millions of new IllegalAliens in the U.S. And, those new IllegalAliens will simply replace the old ones at places like the meat processor, leading to the same abuses.

So, KathyG pretends to oppose workplace abuses, but she can't figure out that what she supports will lead to further workplace abuses.

If anyone wants to know what's really going on with the wider issue, I have thousands of posts spanning several years here:

http://lonewacko.com/

Funny name, but I've forgotten more about this issue than KathyG will ever learn.

[joelz]

NoMoreBlather...you're not even making any sense.

[joelz]

I apologize for coming across as naïve (or for being naïve) and I appreciate people's (Barry, Sir Charles, Low Key, dmbeaster, swampcracker, Liz) responses and references.

[Barry]

Sorry for being harsh, Joelz, but right-wingers frequently use a pretend-naivete to try to slip things in. It's doubly 'funny' here, since Chicago School economics would say that, for all practical purposes the company's management *does* have a spreadsheet listing the cost-benefit analysis of crime.