After Iowa Raid, Immigrants Fuel Labor Inquiries

[RamboLiberal]

Source: NY Times

POSTVILLE, Iowa — When federal immigration agents raided the kosher meatpacking plant here in May and rounded up 389 illegal immigrants, they found more than 20 under-age workers, some as young as 13.

Now those young immigrants have begun to tell investigators about their jobs. Some said they worked shifts of 12 hours or more, wielding razor-edged knives and saws to slice freshly killed beef. Some worked through the night, sometimes six nights a week.

One, a Guatemalan named Elmer L. who said he was 16 when he started working on the plant’s killing floors, said he worked 17-hour shifts, six days a week. In an affidavit, he said he was constantly tired and did not have time to do anything but work and sleep. “I was very sad,” he said, “and I felt like I was a slave.”

At first, labor officials said the raid had disrupted federal and state investigations already under way at Agriprocessors Inc., the nation’s largest kosher plant. The raid has drawn criticism for what some see as harsh tactics against the immigrants, with little action taken against their employers.

But in the aftermath of the arrests, labor investigators have reaped a bounty of new evidence from the testimony of illegal immigrants, teenagers and adults, who were caught in the raid. In formal declarations, immigrants have described pervasive labor violations at the plant, testimony that could result in criminal charges for Agriprocessors executives, labor law experts said.



Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/27/us/27immig.html?hp#

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And to think once these were good paying union jobs. This is one of the big reasons I think we need to go after hard the employers of illegal immigrants. They are not employing the illegals out of the goodness of their hearts. They are doing it for cheap wages, no unions, to skirt work and safety laws and to make sure lapses in food processing standards are not reported.

[jwirr]

1. Finally the truth that many of us who grew up in areas that do this

have always known. These employers fought the unions when they started and have found ways to get around laws in every way they can. If they could they are the kind of people who would gladly bring back slavery. If the employers are forced to obey the law there will be very little immigration to gripe about.

[Alcibiades]

2. Illegal immigration is a hammer for the bosses

A hammer they are using to smash child labor laws, overtime laws, safety laws, and every legal standard for workplace decency set since before the New Deal. And until action is taken against the owners that is as harsh as that taken against the immigrants, nothing will change.

The INS should dump the owners and the managers off in TJ with nothing but the clothes on their backs.

[High Plains]

4. It was red-blooded All-American scabs who broke the unions

in the meatpacking industry in the 1970s and 1980s. I watched it happen.

[Alcibiades]

5. It was the bosses who broke the unions in the meatpacking

industry. The scabs were just the tools they used to do it. Illegal workers have even less legal recourse than the "red-blooded All-American scabs" of the past, and apparently they can be counted on to look the other way when they want to violate other legal protections, such as child labor laws.

[flashl]

3. And, ICE Raid is the hammer for immigrants' attempt to unionize

Union-busting by Any Other Name. . . .

The huge meatpacking plant had been cited by government agencies for numerous violations of environmental and labor laws and for "acts of inhumane slaughter" of animals. New inquiries were under way into allegations of wage violations and the illegal employment of minors. A large national union was trying to organize the factory's 970 workers. But all this was put on hold the morning of May 12, 2008.

...

If this had happened in another country, many of us would condemn it as an effort by an authoritarian regime to smash a unionization drive. But it happened in Postville, Iowa, so we call the massive May 12 raid by the U.S. government's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at the Agriprocessors kosher meatpacking plant a "workplace enforcement operation."

This was not the first ICE operation to have a negative impact on union activities.

* On December 12, 2006, some 1,000 ICE agents raided six Swift & Company meat processing plants in six states, arresting a total of 1,282 immigrant workers. The United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) -- the same union that was active in Postville -- represents workers at five of the plants.

[Alcibiades]

6. I'm shocked

Hire illegally and fire illegally, using the cover of immigration enforcement. Par for the course for Bushco.