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Over 100 kids illegally employed in hazardous jobs, contractor pays $1.5M fine

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Re: Over 100 kids illegally employed in hazardous jobs, contractor pays $1.5M fine

#181

Post by roenxi »

throw93 wrote: post #177
roenxi wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The age of the kids was in their system. Oh, I missed that. I thought they meant that the company had ignored the investigators flagging that there were minors employed. Yeah that is pretty bad. Although I maintain there are going to be a lot more than 100 children illegally employed as cleaners in the US. Not everyone is going to be stupid enough to keep good records like that. > Software development is not a haza…

> Although I maintain there are going to be a lot more than 100 children illegally employed as cleaners in the US The point is the minors working at a meat packing company are victims, it’s ridiculous to blame them regardless of whether they lied or not and in this case they didn’t. The real entity to blame is the company which allowed this to happen and got away with meager $1.5 million fine. > I don't care if they…

> The point is the minors working at a meat packing company are victims

Victims of what, a sudden rush of employment? Child labour laws are, at best, a statistical observation that the majority of children are better off being at school than going to work and it is safer just to insist than try and work out the edge cases.

It is appropriate that the company was fined in accordance with the law, they shouldn't have done this. But fact is that there are some kids where working at 13 will just lead to them having better outcomes than anything else. There are 3 victims here who were injured, beyond that there needs to be actual evidence before we start calling them victims. It isn't like at 17 they're victimised and then at 18 the scales fall from their eyes and everything is roses and sunshine. The line is a reasonable judgement call based on averages and estimated opportunity cost.

> It is related because meat packing is a hazardous job and there are more chances of injury for a minor than an adult, regardless of the training.

Depends on the injury I suppose, but my guess is that if they're stupid enough to have underage employees on payroll this company was probably not providing a safe workplace. I assume injuries are high across the board.

A kid probably is more likely to get injured in the workplace just by virtue of being pretty clueless and a lot more lightweight, I grant you that. But it is quite possible that these injuries say more about the workplace than the age of the injured.

Re: Over 100 kids illegally employed in hazardous jobs, contractor pays $1.5M fine

#182

Post by qikInNdOutReply »

pphysch wrote: post #92
Ancapistani wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in the area where Tyson has most of its poultry operations, and I know a few people who work for them fairly well - including a couple who are working there under false identities due to immigration status. Tyson knows. They couldn't _not_ know. They seem to maintain an acceptable level of "plausible deniability" at least, and I've not seen any evidence that they're explicitly allowing it to happen, or even th…

Of course Tyson knows. Cheaper labor directly translates to increased profits. If Tyson and other megacorporations don't encourage this practice, they are leaving money on the table and violating their fiduciary duty.

That sounds like a sentence one could utter at every crime committed. Mob boss before court. This. Following orders at nuremberg. This. Fiduciary duty beets all other duties i guess.

Re: Over 100 kids illegally employed in hazardous jobs, contractor pays $1.5M fine

#183

Post by baerrie »

Man, I resent that corporations have similar rights as people but if they were actually treated as people, they wouldn’t just be fined, they would be thrown in corporate jail where all operations cease. I wonder how quickly corporate responsibility would improve if that were the case?

Re: Over 100 kids illegally employed in hazardous jobs, contractor pays $1.5M fine

#184

Post by nullbyte808 »

Tangurena2 wrote: post #91
nostromo wrote: post #21

There are millions of undocumented workers in the US using fake identities to get jobs. Both major parties support this system. Some Republican interests enjoy the access to dirt-cheap labor. Some Democratic interests want immigrants to be able to find jobs despite it being illegal to employ them. So we end up with a system where employers have no easy way to verify that an employee is who they say they are and has a…

Back in 2005/2006, there were a number of raids focusing on meat packing plants in the midwest. The investigation started when a routine check of one Immigration employee turned out that she was working simultaneously (well, her name & SSN were) at more than 50 places (and the IRS wanted about $200k in unpaid income taxes). Much of identity theft is focused on the Hispanic names & SSN because those are the ones that…

When you use e-verify now, your photo on your ID pops up. So some of these companies must be either doing it by paper or willfully allowing it.

Re: Over 100 kids illegally employed in hazardous jobs, contractor pays $1.5M fine

#185

Post by dirtyid »

mattanimation wrote: post #32

this is why food is cheap people. I used to drive corn and pea combines in high school, and in the farming community it's not uncommon to have kids driving tractors as well (granted this is usually a family run farm). It's likely that the people working in the factories there knew the kids or families and made an exception to allow them to start early (still technically illegal I know). it's not child slave labor, it…

>its kids trying to make money

I'm sympathetic to this, but kids making money should not undermine adults trying to make a living. I'm fine with underaged kids working, but they should be documented and paid 2x/3x the rate, with everything above minimum wage held until they turn 18 to be used for education or living.

Re: Over 100 kids illegally employed in hazardous jobs, contractor pays $1.5M fine

#186

Post by anonymouskimmer »

jaywalk wrote: post #66
anonymouskimmer wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure it is. The Federal labor laws only apply to businesses engaged in interstate commerce (individual state laws apply locally). But even then exemptions are listed on page 5 of this non-copypastable PDF: https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/WHD/legacy/files/chil... https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/youthrules/young-workers If you are under the age of 14, you are only allowed to do the following jobs: - Deliver new…

> Work as a homeworker gathering evergreens and making evergreen wreaths I would love to know the history of that incredibly specific exemption.

Yeah, I can't find it. My best guess is from the statute itself:

https://www.govregs.com/regulations/expand/title29_chapterV_...

> § 780.1001 - General explanatory statement. Workers in rural areas sometimes engage, as a family unit, around the Christmas holidays, in gathering evergreens and making them into wreaths in their homes. Such workers, under well-settled interpretations by the Department of Labor and the courts, have been held to be employees of the firm which purchases the wreaths and furnishes the workers with wire used in making such wreaths.

I would guess that back in the day people made wreaths to raise funds for the family to pay for Christmas gifts and celebrations, or maybe for general purposes. This section seems to be from 1972, so yeah, I don't know what was happening in the 60s/70s to promote this exemption. Very much early gig economy though.

Re: Over 100 kids illegally employed in hazardous jobs, contractor pays $1.5M fine

#187

Post by Red_Leaves_Flyy »

nightpool wrote: post #178
Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>how do you propose we catch them? Incentives and chilling effects. Automatic 30 days in jail for everyone who oversaw a minor get hired, per day worked. If more than five minors or across multiple managerial departments consider it systemic and send all overseeing managers and their managers to jail for 30 days per minor per shift worked. Strict liability and mandatory minimums are effective against white collar cri…

I think you may have misread my comment. It had nothing to do with the hiring of minors

TFA is about hiring minors and your comment is about identity verification. My comment is perhaps a bit more specific than yours but as it’s directly related to the subject at hand, is relevant and on topic to your question.

Re: Over 100 kids illegally employed in hazardous jobs, contractor pays $1.5M fine

#188

Post by pphysch »

qikInNdOutReply wrote: post #182
pphysch wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course Tyson knows. Cheaper labor directly translates to increased profits. If Tyson and other megacorporations don't encourage this practice, they are leaving money on the table and violating their fiduciary duty.

That sounds like a sentence one could utter at every crime committed. Mob boss before court. This. Following orders at nuremberg. This. Fiduciary duty beets all other duties i guess.

Well, yeah. If a CEO or lower level employee does not follow orders in the name of profit-reducing "ethics" they will be replaced with someone who does.

Welcome to capitalism.

Re: Over 100 kids illegally employed in hazardous jobs, contractor pays $1.5M fine

#189

Post by nightpool »

Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote: post #187
nightpool wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you may have misread my comment. It had nothing to do with the hiring of minors

TFA is about hiring minors and your comment is about identity verification. My comment is perhaps a bit more specific than yours but as it’s directly related to the subject at hand, is relevant and on topic to your question.

My question was in response to Nostromo saying "It should be trivial to solve illegal immigrants working in our system and anybody who says it isn't is profiting directly from the problem". Not exactly sure what point you're making by jumping back to the original topic of the article instead

Re: Over 100 kids illegally employed in hazardous jobs, contractor pays $1.5M fine

#190

Post by nightpool »

throw93 wrote: post #75
nightpool wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"This is such an easy problem to solve" How? If someone uses a fully faked/stolen identity, with a valid SSN / passport # / etc (which every single company is required to check), how do you propose we catch them?

This story is not about fake identity. Company knew they were minors and ignored it. Excerpt from story: “Our investigation found Packers Sanitation Services’ systems flagged some young workers as minors, but the company ignored the flags.”

Yes? I know? That has nothing to do with the claims Nostromo made, that I'm replying to.
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