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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

#71

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

nightpool wrote: post #38
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…

"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?

RealID was supposed to curtail this. They certainly made it hard enough for real citizens to get ID.

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

#72

Post by bnralt »

anonymouskimmer wrote: post #49
stonemetal12 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In non farm jobs, No.

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…

Yeah, child actors are often treated horrendously but we as a society still permit it for some reason. Many people have heard about how two children died because of unsafe conditions during the filming of The Twilight Zone movie. What often gets overlooked is that the two children, ages 6 and 7, were being forced to work through the night (the accident happened at 2:30 a.m.)[1]. If it hadn't been for the helicopter accident, no one would have known.

[1] https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/how-twilight-zone-the-movie-dea...

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

#73

Post by breakingrules »

PuppyTailWags wrote: post #69
bruceb wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Immigration is one of the areas that such blatant lying happens by partisans. We do have defacto open borders. A good segment of Dems politicians and activists try to cover this up. They also misrepresent temporary "humanitarian" visas as being temporary. They are never temporary and always get extended. On the other side is the lack of enforcement on the employer side which a good segment of Rs ignore. Cut off incen…

We do not have de-facto open borders, and this is a huge exaggeration. Immigrants are turned away all the time for all manner of arbitrary reasons. Just because there are large numbers of undocumented people in the country doesn't mean that there isn't border enforcement. Border enforcement is just a hard, expensive problem to solve with no clear vision or leadership.

[flagged]

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

#74

Post by roenxi »

throw93 wrote: post #67
roenxi wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably the children in question lied about their age when they signed up. The most likely scenario is the meat plant offered them the best wage-earning opportunity in the area. If there aren't systems to verify who workers really are then the meat plant might not have had an easy way to find out. Seems plausible as theories go although obviously I only read this press release and moved on. I mean; if the likely o…

> Presumably the children in question lied about their age when they signed up. That’s not true though. The company knew exactly what they were doing and still they went ahead and doubled down on it. Excerpt from article: “Our investigation found Packers Sanitation Services’ systems flagged some young workers as minors, but the company ignored the flags. When the Wage and Hour Division arrived with warrants, the adul…

Probably. They did just lose a big court case.

But if I ask "how old are you?" in an interview and reject anyone who says "17", then all the interviewees are going to say "18". Kids are pretty dumb but they can figure this stuff out. I'd be happy to claim 10 years of Kubernetes experience if I thought it would give me an advantage in the job market, no question. The children in question are already violating local labour laws; claiming to be 18 doesn't really hurt at that point.

Although I will note "tried to derail our efforts" is one of those things that could mean anything. People who are innocent might also have tried to derail efforts. Being investigated prompts some funny responses by businessmen.

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

#75

Post by throw93 »

nightpool wrote: post #38
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…

"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.”

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

#76

Post by fellowniusmonk »

mschuster91 wrote: post #35
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…

> it's not child slave labor, its kids trying to make money. It's price dumping by abusing children who're happy to have a couple dollars to spend on Fortnite characters or whatever the rage is these days. Pay your workers fairly.

As someone who was forced to drop out of school and started illegally working 80 hour weeks at 15 it's all just predatory leverage from exploitive adults no matter how they dress it up as oppurtunity.

My parents used to justify it by bringing up historical farm kids, but ostensibly that work effort is then inherited as capital by those kids.

Working for your dads VC firm or your parents restaurant, on the family farm or mowing lawns in the summer. It's all still child exploitation to some extent but at least it's family time and in some sense you are holistically learning end to end business skills. It's questionable but has some educational return. I could see how it might be fine or beneficial, I get that in those situations there is nuance. Kids working in meatpacking plants aren't Michael Dell building PCs to sell in a garage, in fact such labor precludes them from personal autonomy & early, compounding investment in self development.

In our modern times turning an adolecent into a wage slave is evil, the negative impact continues to compound over the life of that child.

Don't get me started on "teen stars" forced to start music careers playing whatever they are told. Many teens in those situations who start out at malleable but willing children become instant victims of abuse the moment they begin to assert their own tastes.

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

#77

Post by nostromo »

throw93 wrote: post #67
roenxi wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably the children in question lied about their age when they signed up. The most likely scenario is the meat plant offered them the best wage-earning opportunity in the area. If there aren't systems to verify who workers really are then the meat plant might not have had an easy way to find out. Seems plausible as theories go although obviously I only read this press release and moved on. I mean; if the likely o…

> Presumably the children in question lied about their age when they signed up. That’s not true though. The company knew exactly what they were doing and still they went ahead and doubled down on it. Excerpt from article: “Our investigation found Packers Sanitation Services’ systems flagged some young workers as minors, but the company ignored the flags. When the Wage and Hour Division arrived with warrants, the adul…

> That’s not true though.

There's not enough information here to know either way.

What system flagged them, when, and based off of what information?

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

#78

Post by landemva »

j16sdiz wrote: post #70
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?

one way of doing that is government maintains a central registry of employment. This, of course, have many other problems.

Th feds already have that in the payroll tax withholding. Investigators could start there for data analysis then make visits to employers.

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

#79

Post by PuppyTailWags »

breakingrules wrote: post #73
PuppyTailWags wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do not have de-facto open borders, and this is a huge exaggeration. Immigrants are turned away all the time for all manner of arbitrary reasons. Just because there are large numbers of undocumented people in the country doesn't mean that there isn't border enforcement. Border enforcement is just a hard, expensive problem to solve with no clear vision or leadership.

[flagged]

I'm literally currently existing in such an immigrant town. We do not have open borders. We have poorly and inconsistently enforced border patrols, which is completely different. I'm not saying there isn't a problem, I'm saying it's important to not exaggerate the problem.

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

#80

Post by retrac »

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…

Helping out on the family farm is in its own category, in my opinion. For one thing, the parents are probably actually supervising. So they are probably taking some measures to ensure the child is not dismembered. Most parents do have a strong interest in making sure their children aren't wounded or killed. It becomes a different question when we're talking dozens of kids working in a corporate meat processing plant.

> this is why food is cheap people

True. Though as an outsider looking in, it looks disturbing like a class, or even a caste system. Children, illegal immigrants, and workers with little to no bargaining power -- confined mostly to specific rural regions of the country -- do backbreaking labour, often in illegal and unsafe conditions, in order to provide cheap food for the ruling middle class and elites. Said middle class and elites would rather perpetuate these conditions than face even a few % increase on the price of their food, which they'd be able to afford.

I know you didn't mean that, of course. This is just me taking general aim. It's my first reaction to "this is why American food is so cheap" -- well should it be? Or are Americans just externalizing the costs of that cheap food on to others?

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