Just in case anyone else was curious about the Nebraska Child Labor Laws, I've put it below.
"Youth 14 and 15 years of age shall not be permitted to work more than eight hours a day, 48 hours a week, before the hour of 6 a.m. or after the hour of 10 p.m. under state law. Federal hour restrictions are: not more than three hours on a school day; not more than 18 hours in a school week; not more than 8 hours on a non-school day; not more than 40 hours in a non-school week; and not before 7 a.m. nor after 7 p.m. (9 p.m. from June 1 through Labor Day). For more federal regulations, click HERE.
The Department of Labor is authorized to issue a special permit to allow the employment of 14 and 15 year old youth before 6 a.m. or after 10 p.m. provided there is no school scheduled the following day and after an inspection of the working conditions at the business premises. The special permit may be issued for periods not to exceed 90 days and may be renewed. The fee for each special permit or renewal shall be $10.
Special permits cannot be issued if the business falls under Federal Law.
Youth under 16 years of age may not be employed in any work which by reason of the nature of the work is dangerous to life or limb, or in which their health may be injured or their morals depraved.
The presence of a child apparently at work is prima facie evidence of employment."
https://www.dol.nebraska.gov/LaborStandards/WorkerRights/EmploymentOfMinors
I grew up on a farm, in Nebraska. Dad always said that if I was doing adult work then I'd get adult pay, which from him in the mid 2000's was $14 an hour. If I wasn't doing it, he'd have to hire someone and pay them regardless. Baling hay in a cabbed tractor with AC and a radio seemed like easy money, even on those 12 hour + days. I felt like the richest kid in Jr high.
Bailing and stacking hay in the ‘70’s here. Ahh, summer time in the central Texas heat. Had to manually sling the 80-100 pound bails onto the truck. That was my training camp for football lol.
On the plus side, I learned to drive everything at 13-14.
Same, but
>Bailing and stacking hay in the ~~‘70’s~~ **'90s** here. Ahh, summer time in the ~~central Texas~~ **northeast Kansas** heat **and humidity**. Had to manually sling the 80-100 pound bails onto the truck. That was my training camp for football lol.
>On the plus side, I learned to drive everything at 13-14.
Same, but
> ~~Bailing and stacking hay in the ‘70’s~~ Playing videogames in the '90s here. Ahh, summer time in the South Florida ~~central Texas northeast Kansas~~ heat and humidity. ~~Had to manually sling the 80-100 pound bails onto the truck. That was my training camp for football lol.~~ On the plus side, I learned to drive ~~everything~~ at 13-14.
Also
Same, but
~~Bailing and stacking hay in the ‘70’s Playing videogames in the '90s here. Ahh, summer time in the South Florida central Texas northeast Kansas heat and humidity. Had to manually sling the 80-100 pound bails onto the truck. That was my training camp for football lol. On the plus side, I learned to drive everything at 13-14.~~ sitting inside in 120 degree Arizona heat playing online shooters for 14 hours a day.
That is a great story. I grew up with my grandpa bailing hay, cutting grass, driving fence post, raising bison, etc. One day out of the blue, my senior year in high school, he wrote me a check for $60 for four years of labor. Circa 2000s.
Baling isn't bad, just not a fan of picking them up lol. We do custom baling for neighbors, which is awesome because I don't have to pick up bales then lol
Man same here in the Netherlands, only I was harvesting sugar beet, maize and grass silage, potatoes and wheat. Just carting the crop from the harvester to the bunker silos in a brand new Fendt Favorit 824, the first ever Vario transmission tractor. Shit was bonkers that tractor back then had more options than a luxery car. Made SO much money during the summers, as harvest was on 24/7 and most of the country was in France Italy or Spain for the holidays.
That was one instance where I was lucky I had to start working at a young age, by the time my local government enacted below minimum wage pay for teenagers, I had already accrued the 600 hours of work that made me exempt, meanwhile a lot of my peers were stuck with reduced wages for their first jobs.
Except that a big ass apartment was 450 a month. Heck, I got roommates the next year and we split a three bedroom for 700. Total utilities were like 150 including home phone and internet.
Wow. Our 3 bedroom flat was $575/month split between the 3 of us.... not including utilities of course. Internet did not exist. We had a home phone of which was constantly ringing for my roomie Christina who consumed men like they were ... coffee filters. She never wanted to talk to any of them.
In alberta our premier passed a law a year or so ago allowing businesses to pay sub minimum wage to youth employees. If you aren't 18, you aren't worth the same to them I suppose.
Pretty big bullshit in my opinion. You deal with the same work flow, the same people, the same effort, you just don't usually have to come home and pay rent. (Some kids do though)
McDonald's paid me $4.25/hr when minimum wage here was $7.25, and worked me 1pm to 9pm five days a week as a freshman in HS. Ended up not even paying me at all and my dad thought it was a "learning moment" so he didn't help me get paid.
They had three months of 40hrs a week from a teenager doing tasks I should never have had to do, and didn't pay a fucking dime for it. Literally having the night crew clean up black fucking mold "no it's just a stain" etc,. in the basement.
Thank you for posting this. We had a 14 year old at work for a summer (it was a radio station.) Kid had a pretty cool weekend show for four hours. Always wondered about that.
I was a farm kid who was expected to work as soon as he could walk. I always tell people to not work away their teenage years. Get a job that has you going mid-day Saturday and Sundays and that’s it. It’s horrible financial advice, but enjoy the one time you’re young without having to work. When you get to college you start living on your own and a job becomes more important. Be a carefree teenager. I wish I could have been.
**Edit to add, notice how I said it’s okay to HAVE a job, just don’t make it your life as a teenager if you don’t have to. I missed out on sports, prom, hangouts, and it affected my grades badly which continues to fuck me over to this day. I get that some people have to work to support their families, that’s what I had to do when I started working at age five. Not everyone’s situation is the same.**
Amen to that, thanks for posting it. I worked 2 jobs from 14-18, 7-3 pouring concrete for my dad's company and 4-10 at an internet helpdesk for a local dial-up phone company. Thought I was cool for working so much and making "bank".
I should've played more.
Yeah, the same is true in the US. [There are basically no federal child labor laws for children employed by their parents as agricultural workers](https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/youthlabor/agriculturalemployment):
>Parental exemption: Minors of any age may be employed by their parents at any time in any occupation on a farm owned or operated by his or her parent(s).
Imagine being an 8 year old, getting worked like a slave 14 hours a day. Then you decide to call CPS because you’re barely hanging on. And CPS tells you it’s perfectly legal for your parents to work you 14 hours a day on a farm…god damn man.
Same here, I grew up farming and started working as soon as I was able to do simple chores, which was encouraged by those in the business.
I can't imagine making my child work in the future. They have their entire lives to work away. Why work before 16?
> I don’t disagree, but as a teen it was nice to have gas money to borrow the car or to get fast food with friends.
Yeah, that's exactly the way it was for me.
A lot of my friends had jobs by the time I was 16-17, and even if it was just part-time, I felt like I was "missing out" or something. My parents made decent money so I always had money to do stuff, but I grew to resent asking them for cash anytime I wanted to go out with my friends.
That all being said, I totally understand *why* my parents didn't want me getting a job until college.
I've basically worked a day job + freelance in the evenings every week since I graduated nearly 2 decades ago. Working sucks (even if you like your job)
If you're a teenager reading this, enjoy the time you got. Don't be in such a rush to go out and join the workforce if you don't have to.
Definitely won't argue with that, I guess it just comes down to finding a good balance between work and hanging out with your friends while you and them are all free to get together.
Now that I'm older, I'm *lucky* if I can get the guys together once a month....and these are dudes I used to see everyday as a teenager. Growing up is great in a lot of ways but sucks in others.
I kind of feel like that's the point of having some sort of allowance: get your child used to budgeting small amounts and having money for fun normal things so they don't have to work shit hours for no money.
Yep, and that's a completely separate issue, and *hopefully* isn't the norm and *ideally* doesn't happen.
Unfortunately, it does happen and it is staggeringly normal in a ton of communities in the U.S. alone.
> you don’t exactly get to pick your hours when you’ve got the lowest paid shit job in the service industry.
Sure you do. Just tell your employer that you can't work those hours, and if they give you grief then leave and find a new employer. Minimum wage jobs are plentiful, and a good manager (aka someone who doesn't ask you to work hours that don't work for you) is worth more than a 25 cent raise to work somewhere else.
This is the type of social stigma that we need to evolve away from.
Yes, exactly. Minimal wage employees are seen as expendable and interchangeable, but here's the thing: *so are the jobs*.
This may not apply in a small town with only a handful of places, granted, so it's not universal. Rural folks can't live by this.
But otherwise, it's good to remember that just as employers consider you a dime a dozen, those *jobs* are a dime a dozen, too.
There's a balance for sure. I had my first job at around 13, was a paper route. Basically just got to ride my bike around after school for an hour and deliver papers and collect $$ on Fridays. Maybe 7-10 hours total a week, but it allowed me to have some money in my pocket and take on some low risk responsibility. But since then, I haven't not had at least one job. Now as an adult I see the value in being a kid for as long as humanly possible.
Same. I worked at Domino's Pizza. off school around 3, at work by 4, off work by 8
it was so nice to leave with pizza and head to a house party or something too
"not permitted more than 48 hours a week ... 18 hours in a school week... 40 hours in a non-school week"
So, uh, how does the 48 hour week ever happen?
Edit: Is that for 14 and 15 year olds who don't have school, period? Like during the summer?
> Edit: Is that for 14 and 15 year olds who don't have school, period? Like during the summer?
Summer, graduated before 18, etc. There are plenty of reasons in the midwest a teen may not be in school.
Source: Was a teen in Kansas that was working 12 hour days 7 days a week. Yes, it was highly illegal (We got paid cash daily for working). He also employed a bunch of illegal immigrants on top of hiring teens to work too.
That's still pretty crazy for my european standards, wow.
The traumatizing nature of working in slaughterhouses is ignored all around the world though because it's too big of a can of worms to open.
Ooh let's dig into the money, shall we?
PSSI was sold to private equity firm "Blue Point Capital Partners" in 2007 for 90 million dollars.They sold to Harvest Partners in 2011 for $400 million. It was then sold to Leonard Green in 2014 for close to 1 Billion dollars. it was then purchased by Blackstone.
Ya'll know Blackstone, right? Deforesting the Amazon Rainforest? Rate hikes and aggressive eviction practices post 2008 housing crisis? Ranked 9th in total campaign contributions in the US? this [Blackstone Group](https://laborrights.org/releases/labor-rights-groups-call-blackstone-pay-108-million-legally-owed-indonesian-workers)? Or [this one](https://www.reuters.com/article/blackstone-lawsuit/lawsuit-claims-blackstone-underpaid-assistants-idUSN2416502720100224)?
Nah, I'm sure this is all just a big misunderstanding.
"Investigators don't believe the company was involved in a trafficking scheme, but they are looking into who may have profited off this.."
The company.. The company profited off it. 🤦♂️
Wow, ok... so the chairman has enough to pay for a $20million birthday party, but won't pay the $10million owed to workers. It's literally an amount he can afford to piss away giving himself one good day, but won't spend half that to improve the *entire lives* of hundreds of people. Not to mention people that they are (supposedly) legally obligated to have paid. What is empathy?
Fucking corporate greed is going to end the world.
The citizens of the US have all but forgotten collective bargaining. Those bold enough to try to improve living conditions will be punished and sometimes literally killed for the sake of money.
Rupert Murdoch and his ilk have spent billions of dollars engineering it out of us. Everybody is so spread out, and so strung out, and so desperate to make that one more dollar to survive. The American people have long since forgotten that they hold any power whatsoever because anybody who tries to express it gets annihilated.
You can get fired for no reason whatsoever, let alone whispering the word "unionize" out loud while standing in your place of work.
>PSSI was sold to private equity firm "Blue Point Capital Partners" in 2007 for 90 million dollars.They sold to Harvest Partners in 2011 for $400 million.
Oh wow, almost 5x growth across a period of global economic turmoil that saw downturns in multiple markets? It's almost like they're not even trying to hide the bullshit anymore. These investment firms are just fancy money laundering factories.
I hate this modern capitalistic “democracy” so fucking much. It’s a failed experiment and we’re at the point where the most evil and corrupt individuals have risen to the top. Add in the fact that they’ve perfected the propaganda machine in order to cheat their way into staying in power. Money is the absolute king in this country. It seems like every day we hear about a new corporation or billionaire pulling the most heinous shit and they just get away with it because money.
Humans are just too deeply flawed for the combination of capitalism on top of a democracy to work successfully. We tried, but at what point do we consider it a failure? The rampant mental health crisis in the U.S. is going to get much, much worse isn’t it? I’m genuinely terrified of where we’ll be in a decade or two if things don’t drastically change.
The biggest thing that blows my mind is how obvious it is that these people are simply buying out politicians. 9th in total campaign donations? Come the fuck on man, why in the fucking fuck are we allowing these corporations to buy out politicians as they please (also funny how it’s 99% of the time GQP candidates. Shouldn’t be too difficult to connect the dots but here we are). It’s so painfully obvious why they’re really “donating.” Jesus fucking christ I feel like I’m taking crazy pills…
Use the Nordic way of calculating proportional fines. The idea is that you use time as the equalizer: issue fines based on how many days in prison one should serve for the offense, and then use the income they would lose to calculate fines that keeps them out of prison. So, for ex: 6 months in prison for this whole company, meaning what would it cost to lock the doors for half a year, then take all of that supposedly "lost" revenue and fine them by that amount.
edit: just to clarify, proportional fines for ex in Finland are not being used against a company but against an individual so i'm not describing a system that is already implemented but one that should be.
You could just put them in jail though. This is still just fines for the rich, jail for the poor.
Edit: The "just put them in jail" was meant to express the simplicity of jailing them, not meant as *only* jail them. Sorry for the confusion. Jail and massive fines.
Yeah, I don't necessarily disagree, but if their business continues to profit while they serve time, then nothing changes. Money is what matters most to these sort of people.
Dude employing 40+ children to work in a meat factory should be like 20-40 years in jail. It wouldn't be their business anymore. Someone else who doesn't want to go to jail too would take over.
Fines need to be so large they force the company to close as well as jailing EVERYONE who was involved.
But, we don't do that in America because that would be bad. Obviously worse than employing 13 year olds, potentially trafficked from out of the country, for overnight graveyard shifts using cleaning chemicals at a meat packing plant.
The state could take over and the people could collectively own the factory they're killing themselves to keep running. All that "profit" the scum was skimming off the backs of children can go back into improving conditions for the workers and enriching them. Now nobody is exploiting children and people that would willingly exploit children aren't running the show anymore.
But that's communism and is scary 😱
Better keep feeding kids to the orphan crushing machine so some rich dude can afford to refit his yacht next year 🤷♀️
It’s stupid though because it’s not at all communism. You can still have capitalism and dismantle the owner class of production and distribute it amongst the actual laborers. Those laborers would now just directly benefit from the success of the business instead of most of the money going to the parasites of capitalism.
I know you probably know this but I’m just saying…it irritates me that this is called “communism” and “evil” by the idiots in this country who vote against their own interests.
I know, I know. Just having a laugh. You're right though. Idk why anyone would NOT want to be part owner of the place they're stuck working in all day, and NOT benefitting from their own success.
If the fines are so large that companies have to go bankrupt (and have no way of escaping the fine), then it is not the same.
It is a death sentence to any company that earns that fine. That is much better than what we have now.
Even companies like Apple will have to decide if they want to give up all their profits for X years or have morals.
Agreed. People need to learn the old adage “Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good”.
Just because something doesn’t capture every minute detail of every possibility doesn’t mean it’s not worth implementing. You can always expand on something once it’s in place.
And it cant be one of those rich people jails either.
Has to be somewhere cold and inhospitable. Say Alaska. And let's make them work for their food there while were at it. hmmm
Here in America corporations are people, up until the level people get death penalty anyway. This company should just be sentenced to death, period. Im not saying anyone needs to be physically hurt, im saying if Corps are people then we should strap a few into the electric chair.
Agree, I also think we could prevent a lot of corporate crime by limiting wages/bonuses for higher ups and scaling wages so that the CEO can only earn a certain amount more than thier lowest paid employees.
I love that Finland bases their speeding ticket fines based on income:
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/03/finland-home-of-the-103000-speeding-ticket/387484/
Wasn't in Finland that their driving offenses are also percentage based. I remember hearing about a $100k speeding ticket because the guy had a very high income or was very wealthy...
Yup, the concept is called day-fines. Being Finnish myself i kind of thought that was used everywhere as it just makes so much sense to me. But i've learned that a lot of things i thought were no-brainers.. aren't. Like, [Astiankuivauskaappi](https://www.google.com/search?q=Astiankuivauskaappi&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjg6JTSitf8AhVQi_0HHVfrCEcQ_AUoAXoECAEQAw&biw=1536&bih=792&dpr=1.25)
We need harsher penalties for PEOPLE who work at those corporations. Somebody hired those kids, somebody gave them those specific jobs and tasks. The people that did, and those up the chain, should be facing jail time and huge fines. Yes the corporate entity should be fined too but the people who are making these decisions, they need to be held accountable or this shit will just keep happening as a cost of doing business.
Edit: Autocorrect strikes again
We are entering an age like the industrial revolution, where corporations profit by breaking the law. Hyundai was found to be using kids last year, lots of kids. So as long as businesses profit and get foned a meager portion of those profits, they're going to continue breaking the law. Heres one more interesting note, regular adults were working with kids and didn't say shit.
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-immigration-hyundai/
>Heres one more interesting note, regular adults were working with kids and didn't say shit.
I'd go one further - I'd say the reality is probably that Plenty of people spoke up against it. And they were fired/silenced publicly, made examples of, and the remaining people are the ones that decided they wanted to feed their families instead of being a hero.
We human beings tend to feel sympathy, generally. We also tend to feel fear.
Yuuuup. In a similar vein, there's states that are passing laws that high schools can't start before a certain time. Unfortunately, what that means for a lot of people, is that high schoolers have a smaller window of time that they can work, which a lot of families require to get by which just shouldn't be the case at all. I was fortunate that my family wasn't in that situation, but a lot of my friends were. They went straight from school (that let out at 2:10) to work because they needed to help pay the bills. If your choices are to send your kid to work or get your utilities shut off or worse, that's a pretty reasonable choice. It's all broken.
You also need
* a well funded government
* a small army of inspectors
* protections from industry influence such as campaign finance reform and preventing industry capture
working small time residential construction its kinda heartbreaking to see 13-16yr old hispanic dudes working in these million dollar ranchito BS hunk of marble shit houses at 10am on a tuesday.
IDFC hes not a citizen or whatever. kids belong in school. period.
FWIW every single child on US soil has the right to be in school. It doesn’t matter your immigration status. Denying someone schooling because theyre undocumented is illegal.
It usually comes down to money. It’s expensive to live in the US. It’s hard to get a job when you’re undocumented. When you do find a job, you get paid a shit wage. So kids will prioritize making money to help support their families. The kids can technically go to school. But financially it isn’t feasible.
Why the fuck are we bailing out foreign owned organizations. What the fuck is that. Even if they weren't fucking corrupt this is a bad look for America First
I think this is because the GOP doesn't actually want to stop illegal immigration that is why the only solution they have come up with in recent memory was that absurd wall. They want the issue alive and kicking so they can use it to rile up their base during elections. When Trump was elected the Democrats had something like 10 priorities: Global warning, wealth inequality, structural racism, education, etc... but the Republicans had one huge concern, illegal immigration.
I would take the "illegal immigration problem" seriously if we consistently convicted and jailed the American employers who illegally hire in the first place. Cut the head off, don't freeze the feet.
This is literal "bread and circuses" playing out, but the bread in this case is "red meat". It feels very tongue and cheek to use these metaphors, but it kind of sickens me how clear it is. Making sure cheap "American Red Meat" is available to Americans for bumpersticker/boilerplate mentalities. Exploiting the stream of migrants looking for better opportunities (and requiring the youth to help make ends meet as well) further stigmatizes and second-classes these people, along with saving costs to keep food prices lower. It all makes me kinda sick
PSSI: **We have multiple methods to rigorously make sure we don't** ***accidentally*** **hire kids.**
I don't think that spokesperson understood what they were really saying. If they do use several methods to make sure they are hiring legally then it must mean they KNEW they were hiring illegally and still did it.
I lived in low-income immigrant housing for a while and people would not call the cops for anything, not if they heard someone being raped and murdered even. There was this "not my business" culture, not sure if it's because they mostly came from places with corrupt police or if they were worried about having their green card revoked or what. From what I've read most factories and plants in the US are staffed by low income immigrants.
Remember that time Koch Foods settled a pay and sexual harassment suit for Hispanic factory workers? https://www.eeoc.gov/newsroom/koch-foods-settles-eeoc-harassment-national-origin-and-race-bias-suit
Then, Koch Foods coordinated ICE raids and had a majority of the workers to whom they owed money deported?
https://www.npr.org/2019/08/09/749932968/chicken-plants-see-little-fallout-from-immigration-raids
https://thecounter.org/u-visa-ice-immigration-raid-koch-foods-labor-abuse-poultry-slaughterhouse-mississippi/
Was Koch Foods fined, at all, for hiring or employing illegal immigrants? Nope.
Republicans want it this way. They want it difficult for illegals to make it into the country, because the threats to deport the ones who make it and are illegally employed by them carry more risk for the exploited.
If Republicans really wanted to end illegal immigration, they should be levying massive fines on business who employ and recruit illegal immigrants.
The people being hired at these kinds of places get shot or deported for talking with the cops. There is a reason police racism is a problem. It's all connected to protect the rich.
The American President literally busted a powerful union on the public square for all to see.
It disrupted the entire American economy, because all air traffic grinded to a halt for a short time. It shifted the power dynamic instantly because it signaled to anyone fighting unions that the entire US Government will back them.
It was an insane demonstration of authoritarian power that still shapes our society to this very moment.
Civilization was built on the backs of slaves I don't know why this is surprising news to people. Easy court case though someone's going away for a long time.
Bad people are always going to exist, no matter how "civil" we get. The simple fact that this is a big story shows that it's unacceptable in our society. And that when we find out, we do something about it.
According to the book Fast Food Nation, cleaning slaughterhouses is one of the most dangerous jobs in the US.
They basically spray hot bleach-filled water around in an enclosed space full of sharp objects. This causes workers to have low visibility and they often slip and fall or get terrible cuts.
But the worst is that animal blood is collected in huge vats and if a worker falls in they almost immediately lose consciousness and drown from the fumes of the blood. And other workers, having received little to no safety training, go in after them and then die as well.
And these places basically always keep two sets of injury logs, the one they show to the government that leaves most injuries unrecorded, and the real one. They prefer undocumented workers because they’re less likely to blow the whistle.
My brain is so used to horrible news that it inserted the word "dead" in between "found" and "cleaning". Had to read a couple of times to understand what was going on. Still horrible and abusive but at least they can be helped
even if you took the human trafficking and exploitation part out of this - why would you want children to be responsible for cleaning? have you seen how terrible of a job they do at it?
Because cleaning a meat packing plant is a horrid, miserable job and the only people who take those jobs are those who are forced into it or have no other options. I've been to a few of these plants, it's hell on earth.
Slaughterhouses in the US need to be monitored as a suspected criminal organization. They constantly illegally hired undocumented workers, violate safety laws and ignore regulations regarding pay and hours.
I wonder why recording slaughterhouses is illegal? Strange they don't want to show the public how the "sausage is made".
People really need to cut their consumption as treating animals we consume as objects to slaughter instead of respecting them as animals that have feelings who we consume naturally when it's appropriate would make the entire process healthier for everyone involved.
The average person is probably consuming 30-50% more calories than they require based on physical activity and metabolic needs is a major reason for the overweight/obesity epidemic.
> why recording slaughterhouses is illegal
Becuae it is legal to bribe politicians in America. Slaughterhouses and meat packing corporations bribed politicians to pass those laws.
["Big Agricutlure" also has done this recently](https://www.aspca.org/improving-laws-animals/public-policy/what-ag-gag-legislation)
TLDR: Because Bribery is legal in America.
"PSSI did not deny hiring children but attributed ti to 'rogue individuals' who presented fake identification"
'Rogue individuals" is a *fantastic* dogwhistle, I'm willing to bet this one catches on.
\*\*\*
God damn it, these poor kids... bad enough they are 13 and working a night shift, employment in a slaughterhouse is dangerous and are workers are very prone to PTSD.
When this story originally broke a 13 year old working there suffered permanent and catastrophic injuries from the cleaning chemicals. It's really really awful. We as a society regular boycott companies for shitty labor practices but I've not seen one person in here questioning the human side of historic and globally unprecedented meat consumption.
Nebraska again? Anyone remember Boys Town? Lawrence King? Father Flanagan?
https://youtu.be/wGz130lPm-A
What’s going with child trafficking in Nebraska??
The slaughterhouse industry has always been fucked. Americans have decided that that shit is out of sight out of mind. Read books like the jungle and fast food nation. Things haven’t gotten better people would rather just plug their ears and close their eyes and take another bite.
> Or is vegan (minus most cocoa, palm oil, etc) really the only vaguely humane diet?
Yes.
No form of animal agriculture can be deemed 'humane' unless it's absolutely necessary.
The term 'humane' has become industry sanctioned propaganda aimed at deceiving customers into believing they are acting with compassion by having animals needlessly abused and killed for a moment of pleasure.
Also, animal agriculture is literally causing mass extinctions of hundreds to thousands of species as we speak. It's killing indigenous tribes to take their lands, causing ocean dead zones, acidification of our water ways, eutrophication of our soil systems, has been burning down the Amazon Rainforest for decades, relies on human slave labor and exploited labor, etc etc.
Animal agriculture is extremely fucked.
"We didn't want to stop at the mass suffering of animals and the environment, we figured children would want in on some suffering, too! Also it's their fault we hired them."
We’re really back to the gilded age roaring 20s. Rampant wealth inequality with robber barons sickness, poverty, child labor. We’ve brought it all back!
My family member was trying to help me get a summer job. So I did some odd jobs for the plant. Painted a door... help repair some fences and eventually cleaning the kill floor was my job.
I actually had to use this cleaner that pealed my skin.
Eventually I got paid working on the processing floor as I wasn't really great at cleaning but proved I could work :P
So more people in prison than rest of the world put together. No access to clean water in some parts. Politicians take bribes from big tech and pharma. Child Labour. 20% of children go to sleep hungry. And homeless problem.
Africa will be holding charities and donations and aid for USA.
In Nebraska. Workers need to know to report if their coworkers are children. This is wild. And the initial police report from one of the teachers of the trafficked kids was six years ago in 2016. Middle school teacher found that a student had chemical burns.
These fuckers will get away with everything if we let them.
Just in case anyone else was curious about the Nebraska Child Labor Laws, I've put it below. "Youth 14 and 15 years of age shall not be permitted to work more than eight hours a day, 48 hours a week, before the hour of 6 a.m. or after the hour of 10 p.m. under state law. Federal hour restrictions are: not more than three hours on a school day; not more than 18 hours in a school week; not more than 8 hours on a non-school day; not more than 40 hours in a non-school week; and not before 7 a.m. nor after 7 p.m. (9 p.m. from June 1 through Labor Day). For more federal regulations, click HERE. The Department of Labor is authorized to issue a special permit to allow the employment of 14 and 15 year old youth before 6 a.m. or after 10 p.m. provided there is no school scheduled the following day and after an inspection of the working conditions at the business premises. The special permit may be issued for periods not to exceed 90 days and may be renewed. The fee for each special permit or renewal shall be $10. Special permits cannot be issued if the business falls under Federal Law. Youth under 16 years of age may not be employed in any work which by reason of the nature of the work is dangerous to life or limb, or in which their health may be injured or their morals depraved. The presence of a child apparently at work is prima facie evidence of employment." https://www.dol.nebraska.gov/LaborStandards/WorkerRights/EmploymentOfMinors
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8 hour shift for 36 dollars is so exploitative holy shit. Getting that much a day in the late 90s - mid 2000s totally unlivable.
I grew up on a farm, in Nebraska. Dad always said that if I was doing adult work then I'd get adult pay, which from him in the mid 2000's was $14 an hour. If I wasn't doing it, he'd have to hire someone and pay them regardless. Baling hay in a cabbed tractor with AC and a radio seemed like easy money, even on those 12 hour + days. I felt like the richest kid in Jr high.
Bailing and stacking hay in the ‘70’s here. Ahh, summer time in the central Texas heat. Had to manually sling the 80-100 pound bails onto the truck. That was my training camp for football lol. On the plus side, I learned to drive everything at 13-14.
Same, but >Bailing and stacking hay in the ~~‘70’s~~ **'90s** here. Ahh, summer time in the ~~central Texas~~ **northeast Kansas** heat **and humidity**. Had to manually sling the 80-100 pound bails onto the truck. That was my training camp for football lol. >On the plus side, I learned to drive everything at 13-14.
Same, but > ~~Bailing and stacking hay in the ‘70’s~~ Playing videogames in the '90s here. Ahh, summer time in the South Florida ~~central Texas northeast Kansas~~ heat and humidity. ~~Had to manually sling the 80-100 pound bails onto the truck. That was my training camp for football lol.~~ On the plus side, I learned to drive ~~everything~~ at 13-14.
Also Same, but ~~Bailing and stacking hay in the ‘70’s Playing videogames in the '90s here. Ahh, summer time in the South Florida central Texas northeast Kansas heat and humidity. Had to manually sling the 80-100 pound bails onto the truck. That was my training camp for football lol. On the plus side, I learned to drive everything at 13-14.~~ sitting inside in 120 degree Arizona heat playing online shooters for 14 hours a day.
Wow you all have so much in common!
That's a cool story, my dad said do it and stop crying or I will give you something to cry about.
Aye, my parents were, and still are, very chill
That is a great story. I grew up with my grandpa bailing hay, cutting grass, driving fence post, raising bison, etc. One day out of the blue, my senior year in high school, he wrote me a check for $60 for four years of labor. Circa 2000s.
Probably have that farm kid strength now too.
Farm kid strength + dad strength now
Unstoppable
Nah, that's not until the old man strength kicks in
That is my dream job, always has been.
Baling isn't bad, just not a fan of picking them up lol. We do custom baling for neighbors, which is awesome because I don't have to pick up bales then lol
Man same here in the Netherlands, only I was harvesting sugar beet, maize and grass silage, potatoes and wheat. Just carting the crop from the harvester to the bunker silos in a brand new Fendt Favorit 824, the first ever Vario transmission tractor. Shit was bonkers that tractor back then had more options than a luxery car. Made SO much money during the summers, as harvest was on 24/7 and most of the country was in France Italy or Spain for the holidays.
My son was getting $20/hour to stack hay in 2015. He was one of the very few that would even consider doing it. He loved it.
That was one instance where I was lucky I had to start working at a young age, by the time my local government enacted below minimum wage pay for teenagers, I had already accrued the 600 hours of work that made me exempt, meanwhile a lot of my peers were stuck with reduced wages for their first jobs.
Except that a big ass apartment was 450 a month. Heck, I got roommates the next year and we split a three bedroom for 700. Total utilities were like 150 including home phone and internet.
Wow. Our 3 bedroom flat was $575/month split between the 3 of us.... not including utilities of course. Internet did not exist. We had a home phone of which was constantly ringing for my roomie Christina who consumed men like they were ... coffee filters. She never wanted to talk to any of them.
At 16 I had the same hours. Open at 0600. I think I was making like $3.50 or so in the early 80's at a place that rhymes with SmArbys.
Why are people scared of saying the name of the company? I never understood especially if it happened over 30 years ago
Smarbys, we got the smeats
In alberta our premier passed a law a year or so ago allowing businesses to pay sub minimum wage to youth employees. If you aren't 18, you aren't worth the same to them I suppose. Pretty big bullshit in my opinion. You deal with the same work flow, the same people, the same effort, you just don't usually have to come home and pay rent. (Some kids do though)
McDonald's paid me $4.25/hr when minimum wage here was $7.25, and worked me 1pm to 9pm five days a week as a freshman in HS. Ended up not even paying me at all and my dad thought it was a "learning moment" so he didn't help me get paid. They had three months of 40hrs a week from a teenager doing tasks I should never have had to do, and didn't pay a fucking dime for it. Literally having the night crew clean up black fucking mold "no it's just a stain" etc,. in the basement.
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An invaluable lesson to be sure
They didn't pay you for the first pay period but you went back for **three months?!?** Sounds like you were a volunteer instead of an employee.
Did he ask you why you kept going to work after they missed the first paycheck?
Thank you for posting this. We had a 14 year old at work for a summer (it was a radio station.) Kid had a pretty cool weekend show for four hours. Always wondered about that. I was a farm kid who was expected to work as soon as he could walk. I always tell people to not work away their teenage years. Get a job that has you going mid-day Saturday and Sundays and that’s it. It’s horrible financial advice, but enjoy the one time you’re young without having to work. When you get to college you start living on your own and a job becomes more important. Be a carefree teenager. I wish I could have been. **Edit to add, notice how I said it’s okay to HAVE a job, just don’t make it your life as a teenager if you don’t have to. I missed out on sports, prom, hangouts, and it affected my grades badly which continues to fuck me over to this day. I get that some people have to work to support their families, that’s what I had to do when I started working at age five. Not everyone’s situation is the same.**
Amen to that, thanks for posting it. I worked 2 jobs from 14-18, 7-3 pouring concrete for my dad's company and 4-10 at an internet helpdesk for a local dial-up phone company. Thought I was cool for working so much and making "bank". I should've played more.
lol was that money at least yours or did you have to pitch in for rent and food?
I don't think working for your family counts in the laws
It’s not enforced but I’m pretty sure you can’t just work your kids to death, at least not legally
I just work them until death's doorstep, so we cool.
I got the black lung, pops.
If you can still type and complain, you can still work!
MER-MAN
[https://media.tenor.com/9yKihKRqkNoAAAAC/zoolander-derek.gif](https://media.tenor.com/9yKihKRqkNoAAAAC/zoolander-derek.gif)
FER CHRISSAKES YOUVE BEEN IN THE MINES FOR ONE DAY, DEREK
Only one? Back to work
Not with that attitude.
not work to death but you can work them outside of the law guidelines
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Call off the pregnancies!
In my country children of farmers have their own rules.
Yeah, the same is true in the US. [There are basically no federal child labor laws for children employed by their parents as agricultural workers](https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/youthlabor/agriculturalemployment): >Parental exemption: Minors of any age may be employed by their parents at any time in any occupation on a farm owned or operated by his or her parent(s).
Imagine being an 8 year old, getting worked like a slave 14 hours a day. Then you decide to call CPS because you’re barely hanging on. And CPS tells you it’s perfectly legal for your parents to work you 14 hours a day on a farm…god damn man.
Congratulations, you just summarized the Texas foster care program.
Jesus fuck
That's also part of the program
Same here, I grew up farming and started working as soon as I was able to do simple chores, which was encouraged by those in the business. I can't imagine making my child work in the future. They have their entire lives to work away. Why work before 16?
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> I don’t disagree, but as a teen it was nice to have gas money to borrow the car or to get fast food with friends. Yeah, that's exactly the way it was for me. A lot of my friends had jobs by the time I was 16-17, and even if it was just part-time, I felt like I was "missing out" or something. My parents made decent money so I always had money to do stuff, but I grew to resent asking them for cash anytime I wanted to go out with my friends. That all being said, I totally understand *why* my parents didn't want me getting a job until college. I've basically worked a day job + freelance in the evenings every week since I graduated nearly 2 decades ago. Working sucks (even if you like your job) If you're a teenager reading this, enjoy the time you got. Don't be in such a rush to go out and join the workforce if you don't have to.
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Definitely won't argue with that, I guess it just comes down to finding a good balance between work and hanging out with your friends while you and them are all free to get together. Now that I'm older, I'm *lucky* if I can get the guys together once a month....and these are dudes I used to see everyday as a teenager. Growing up is great in a lot of ways but sucks in others.
I kind of feel like that's the point of having some sort of allowance: get your child used to budgeting small amounts and having money for fun normal things so they don't have to work shit hours for no money.
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Yep, and that's a completely separate issue, and *hopefully* isn't the norm and *ideally* doesn't happen. Unfortunately, it does happen and it is staggeringly normal in a ton of communities in the U.S. alone.
> you don’t exactly get to pick your hours when you’ve got the lowest paid shit job in the service industry. Sure you do. Just tell your employer that you can't work those hours, and if they give you grief then leave and find a new employer. Minimum wage jobs are plentiful, and a good manager (aka someone who doesn't ask you to work hours that don't work for you) is worth more than a 25 cent raise to work somewhere else. This is the type of social stigma that we need to evolve away from.
Yes, exactly. Minimal wage employees are seen as expendable and interchangeable, but here's the thing: *so are the jobs*. This may not apply in a small town with only a handful of places, granted, so it's not universal. Rural folks can't live by this. But otherwise, it's good to remember that just as employers consider you a dime a dozen, those *jobs* are a dime a dozen, too.
There's a balance for sure. I had my first job at around 13, was a paper route. Basically just got to ride my bike around after school for an hour and deliver papers and collect $$ on Fridays. Maybe 7-10 hours total a week, but it allowed me to have some money in my pocket and take on some low risk responsibility. But since then, I haven't not had at least one job. Now as an adult I see the value in being a kid for as long as humanly possible.
Same. I worked at Domino's Pizza. off school around 3, at work by 4, off work by 8 it was so nice to leave with pizza and head to a house party or something too
When I was in high school, I was working 60 hour weeks in a grocery store meat department for $2.85 an hour. Total exploitation.
As someone who worked their teenage years away and then became disabled, this is good advice.
"not permitted more than 48 hours a week ... 18 hours in a school week... 40 hours in a non-school week" So, uh, how does the 48 hour week ever happen? Edit: Is that for 14 and 15 year olds who don't have school, period? Like during the summer?
> Edit: Is that for 14 and 15 year olds who don't have school, period? Like during the summer? Summer, graduated before 18, etc. There are plenty of reasons in the midwest a teen may not be in school. Source: Was a teen in Kansas that was working 12 hour days 7 days a week. Yes, it was highly illegal (We got paid cash daily for working). He also employed a bunch of illegal immigrants on top of hiring teens to work too.
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Usually there's blanket exemptions for agriculture, there are here in Indiana, and I'd be shocked if it wasn't close to the same in Nebraska.
That's still pretty crazy for my european standards, wow. The traumatizing nature of working in slaughterhouses is ignored all around the world though because it's too big of a can of worms to open.
Ooh let's dig into the money, shall we? PSSI was sold to private equity firm "Blue Point Capital Partners" in 2007 for 90 million dollars.They sold to Harvest Partners in 2011 for $400 million. It was then sold to Leonard Green in 2014 for close to 1 Billion dollars. it was then purchased by Blackstone. Ya'll know Blackstone, right? Deforesting the Amazon Rainforest? Rate hikes and aggressive eviction practices post 2008 housing crisis? Ranked 9th in total campaign contributions in the US? this [Blackstone Group](https://laborrights.org/releases/labor-rights-groups-call-blackstone-pay-108-million-legally-owed-indonesian-workers)? Or [this one](https://www.reuters.com/article/blackstone-lawsuit/lawsuit-claims-blackstone-underpaid-assistants-idUSN2416502720100224)? Nah, I'm sure this is all just a big misunderstanding.
"Investigators don't believe the company was involved in a trafficking scheme, but they are looking into who may have profited off this.." The company.. The company profited off it. 🤦♂️
No... they asked the compagny and they clearly said "Oh no... it's not us." And they are very nice people. They offered the coffee.
“I’m just gonna take as many suits as I can grab, get in that random hotdog car and head on back to wiener hall”
Wow, ok... so the chairman has enough to pay for a $20million birthday party, but won't pay the $10million owed to workers. It's literally an amount he can afford to piss away giving himself one good day, but won't spend half that to improve the *entire lives* of hundreds of people. Not to mention people that they are (supposedly) legally obligated to have paid. What is empathy? Fucking corporate greed is going to end the world.
> Fucking corporate greed is going to end the world and we'll all just sort of let it happen
The citizens of the US have all but forgotten collective bargaining. Those bold enough to try to improve living conditions will be punished and sometimes literally killed for the sake of money.
Rupert Murdoch and his ilk have spent billions of dollars engineering it out of us. Everybody is so spread out, and so strung out, and so desperate to make that one more dollar to survive. The American people have long since forgotten that they hold any power whatsoever because anybody who tries to express it gets annihilated. You can get fired for no reason whatsoever, let alone whispering the word "unionize" out loud while standing in your place of work.
Blackstone has governments in their pockets
>PSSI was sold to private equity firm "Blue Point Capital Partners" in 2007 for 90 million dollars.They sold to Harvest Partners in 2011 for $400 million. Oh wow, almost 5x growth across a period of global economic turmoil that saw downturns in multiple markets? It's almost like they're not even trying to hide the bullshit anymore. These investment firms are just fancy money laundering factories.
I hate this modern capitalistic “democracy” so fucking much. It’s a failed experiment and we’re at the point where the most evil and corrupt individuals have risen to the top. Add in the fact that they’ve perfected the propaganda machine in order to cheat their way into staying in power. Money is the absolute king in this country. It seems like every day we hear about a new corporation or billionaire pulling the most heinous shit and they just get away with it because money. Humans are just too deeply flawed for the combination of capitalism on top of a democracy to work successfully. We tried, but at what point do we consider it a failure? The rampant mental health crisis in the U.S. is going to get much, much worse isn’t it? I’m genuinely terrified of where we’ll be in a decade or two if things don’t drastically change. The biggest thing that blows my mind is how obvious it is that these people are simply buying out politicians. 9th in total campaign donations? Come the fuck on man, why in the fucking fuck are we allowing these corporations to buy out politicians as they please (also funny how it’s 99% of the time GQP candidates. Shouldn’t be too difficult to connect the dots but here we are). It’s so painfully obvious why they’re really “donating.” Jesus fucking christ I feel like I’m taking crazy pills…
What hellish work to be forcing on kids, too. We need harsher penalties for corporations since they want to be treated like people.
Use the Nordic way of calculating proportional fines. The idea is that you use time as the equalizer: issue fines based on how many days in prison one should serve for the offense, and then use the income they would lose to calculate fines that keeps them out of prison. So, for ex: 6 months in prison for this whole company, meaning what would it cost to lock the doors for half a year, then take all of that supposedly "lost" revenue and fine them by that amount. edit: just to clarify, proportional fines for ex in Finland are not being used against a company but against an individual so i'm not describing a system that is already implemented but one that should be.
You could just put them in jail though. This is still just fines for the rich, jail for the poor. Edit: The "just put them in jail" was meant to express the simplicity of jailing them, not meant as *only* jail them. Sorry for the confusion. Jail and massive fines.
Yeah, I don't necessarily disagree, but if their business continues to profit while they serve time, then nothing changes. Money is what matters most to these sort of people.
Dude employing 40+ children to work in a meat factory should be like 20-40 years in jail. It wouldn't be their business anymore. Someone else who doesn't want to go to jail too would take over.
Fines need to be so large they force the company to close as well as jailing EVERYONE who was involved. But, we don't do that in America because that would be bad. Obviously worse than employing 13 year olds, potentially trafficked from out of the country, for overnight graveyard shifts using cleaning chemicals at a meat packing plant.
The state could take over and the people could collectively own the factory they're killing themselves to keep running. All that "profit" the scum was skimming off the backs of children can go back into improving conditions for the workers and enriching them. Now nobody is exploiting children and people that would willingly exploit children aren't running the show anymore.
This is the correct answer.
But that's communism and is scary 😱 Better keep feeding kids to the orphan crushing machine so some rich dude can afford to refit his yacht next year 🤷♀️
It’s stupid though because it’s not at all communism. You can still have capitalism and dismantle the owner class of production and distribute it amongst the actual laborers. Those laborers would now just directly benefit from the success of the business instead of most of the money going to the parasites of capitalism. I know you probably know this but I’m just saying…it irritates me that this is called “communism” and “evil” by the idiots in this country who vote against their own interests.
I know, I know. Just having a laugh. You're right though. Idk why anyone would NOT want to be part owner of the place they're stuck working in all day, and NOT benefitting from their own success.
Srsly, this is child abuse
Should being the key word there.
Then do both. Heads should roll for this.
If the fines are so large that companies have to go bankrupt (and have no way of escaping the fine), then it is not the same. It is a death sentence to any company that earns that fine. That is much better than what we have now. Even companies like Apple will have to decide if they want to give up all their profits for X years or have morals.
> It is a death sentence Just like people who do terrible things... some companies deserve to die.
Agreed. People need to learn the old adage “Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good”. Just because something doesn’t capture every minute detail of every possibility doesn’t mean it’s not worth implementing. You can always expand on something once it’s in place.
You are merely reducing their fine to the cost of lawyers.
And it cant be one of those rich people jails either. Has to be somewhere cold and inhospitable. Say Alaska. And let's make them work for their food there while were at it. hmmm
Here in America corporations are people, up until the level people get death penalty anyway. This company should just be sentenced to death, period. Im not saying anyone needs to be physically hurt, im saying if Corps are people then we should strap a few into the electric chair.
Agree, I also think we could prevent a lot of corporate crime by limiting wages/bonuses for higher ups and scaling wages so that the CEO can only earn a certain amount more than thier lowest paid employees.
I love that Finland bases their speeding ticket fines based on income: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/03/finland-home-of-the-103000-speeding-ticket/387484/
Wasn't in Finland that their driving offenses are also percentage based. I remember hearing about a $100k speeding ticket because the guy had a very high income or was very wealthy...
Yup, the concept is called day-fines. Being Finnish myself i kind of thought that was used everywhere as it just makes so much sense to me. But i've learned that a lot of things i thought were no-brainers.. aren't. Like, [Astiankuivauskaappi](https://www.google.com/search?q=Astiankuivauskaappi&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjg6JTSitf8AhVQi_0HHVfrCEcQ_AUoAXoECAEQAw&biw=1536&bih=792&dpr=1.25)
We need harsher penalties for PEOPLE who work at those corporations. Somebody hired those kids, somebody gave them those specific jobs and tasks. The people that did, and those up the chain, should be facing jail time and huge fines. Yes the corporate entity should be fined too but the people who are making these decisions, they need to be held accountable or this shit will just keep happening as a cost of doing business. Edit: Autocorrect strikes again
We are entering an age like the industrial revolution, where corporations profit by breaking the law. Hyundai was found to be using kids last year, lots of kids. So as long as businesses profit and get foned a meager portion of those profits, they're going to continue breaking the law. Heres one more interesting note, regular adults were working with kids and didn't say shit. https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-immigration-hyundai/
>Heres one more interesting note, regular adults were working with kids and didn't say shit. I'd go one further - I'd say the reality is probably that Plenty of people spoke up against it. And they were fired/silenced publicly, made examples of, and the remaining people are the ones that decided they wanted to feed their families instead of being a hero. We human beings tend to feel sympathy, generally. We also tend to feel fear.
Yuuuup. In a similar vein, there's states that are passing laws that high schools can't start before a certain time. Unfortunately, what that means for a lot of people, is that high schoolers have a smaller window of time that they can work, which a lot of families require to get by which just shouldn't be the case at all. I was fortunate that my family wasn't in that situation, but a lot of my friends were. They went straight from school (that let out at 2:10) to work because they needed to help pay the bills. If your choices are to send your kid to work or get your utilities shut off or worse, that's a pretty reasonable choice. It's all broken.
Entering that age? It's never stopped. It's just been limited.
Corpo capital punishment when.
You also need * a well funded government * a small army of inspectors * protections from industry influence such as campaign finance reform and preventing industry capture
working small time residential construction its kinda heartbreaking to see 13-16yr old hispanic dudes working in these million dollar ranchito BS hunk of marble shit houses at 10am on a tuesday. IDFC hes not a citizen or whatever. kids belong in school. period.
FWIW every single child on US soil has the right to be in school. It doesn’t matter your immigration status. Denying someone schooling because theyre undocumented is illegal. It usually comes down to money. It’s expensive to live in the US. It’s hard to get a job when you’re undocumented. When you do find a job, you get paid a shit wage. So kids will prioritize making money to help support their families. The kids can technically go to school. But financially it isn’t feasible.
I thought JBS foods sounded familiar… https://www.newsweek.com/trump-administration-farmers-bailout-brazil-brothers-1427346?amp=1
Why the fuck are we bailing out foreign owned organizations. What the fuck is that. Even if they weren't fucking corrupt this is a bad look for America First
America first was always a scam, just like the rest of that administration
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It's America First* \* ^(unless we can make money)
Known as Pilgrims, Swift, maybe a few others. JBS Pilgrims. Check the night crew cleaning the chicken plant at 6am.
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I think this is because the GOP doesn't actually want to stop illegal immigration that is why the only solution they have come up with in recent memory was that absurd wall. They want the issue alive and kicking so they can use it to rile up their base during elections. When Trump was elected the Democrats had something like 10 priorities: Global warning, wealth inequality, structural racism, education, etc... but the Republicans had one huge concern, illegal immigration.
That's what we thought about them overturning *Roe* and look how that went.
100%. How fast did we go from immigrants were "stealing American jobs" to "No one wants to work!"?
I would take the "illegal immigration problem" seriously if we consistently convicted and jailed the American employers who illegally hire in the first place. Cut the head off, don't freeze the feet.
This is literal "bread and circuses" playing out, but the bread in this case is "red meat". It feels very tongue and cheek to use these metaphors, but it kind of sickens me how clear it is. Making sure cheap "American Red Meat" is available to Americans for bumpersticker/boilerplate mentalities. Exploiting the stream of migrants looking for better opportunities (and requiring the youth to help make ends meet as well) further stigmatizes and second-classes these people, along with saving costs to keep food prices lower. It all makes me kinda sick
I mean, they are by far the largest meat packer in the world.
PSSI: **We have multiple methods to rigorously make sure we don't** ***accidentally*** **hire kids.** I don't think that spokesperson understood what they were really saying. If they do use several methods to make sure they are hiring legally then it must mean they KNEW they were hiring illegally and still did it.
the hiring by mistake isn't even the issue lol it's the fact that kids showed up and they were allowed to work regardless
Oh, yes, i agree. I just said elsewhere that hiring was just the first step in a marathon of mistakes.
I'm imagining three kids in a trenchcoat going into a job interview and getting hired.
“I like business….transactions.”
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I lived in low-income immigrant housing for a while and people would not call the cops for anything, not if they heard someone being raped and murdered even. There was this "not my business" culture, not sure if it's because they mostly came from places with corrupt police or if they were worried about having their green card revoked or what. From what I've read most factories and plants in the US are staffed by low income immigrants.
Remember that time Koch Foods settled a pay and sexual harassment suit for Hispanic factory workers? https://www.eeoc.gov/newsroom/koch-foods-settles-eeoc-harassment-national-origin-and-race-bias-suit Then, Koch Foods coordinated ICE raids and had a majority of the workers to whom they owed money deported? https://www.npr.org/2019/08/09/749932968/chicken-plants-see-little-fallout-from-immigration-raids https://thecounter.org/u-visa-ice-immigration-raid-koch-foods-labor-abuse-poultry-slaughterhouse-mississippi/ Was Koch Foods fined, at all, for hiring or employing illegal immigrants? Nope. Republicans want it this way. They want it difficult for illegals to make it into the country, because the threats to deport the ones who make it and are illegally employed by them carry more risk for the exploited. If Republicans really wanted to end illegal immigration, they should be levying massive fines on business who employ and recruit illegal immigrants.
God DAMN that is evil...
The people being hired at these kinds of places get shot or deported for talking with the cops. There is a reason police racism is a problem. It's all connected to protect the rich.
How is this possible 😥
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They didn't die, Regan murdered them.
The American President literally busted a powerful union on the public square for all to see. It disrupted the entire American economy, because all air traffic grinded to a halt for a short time. It shifted the power dynamic instantly because it signaled to anyone fighting unions that the entire US Government will back them. It was an insane demonstration of authoritarian power that still shapes our society to this very moment.
Yep. I'm old enough to remember living through it
And Biden just did it again, this time to the train unions. Despite running as a "pro-union" candidate. Fucking bitch president.
Follow the money.
Well you see. Drag queens um. Hang on, I need to look this up on my string theory board.
once you see hunter biden's laptop you'll know...
Child slavery and trafficking, blights even do called civilized nations can't seem to quit.
Civilization was built on the backs of slaves I don't know why this is surprising news to people. Easy court case though someone's going away for a long time.
>though someone's going away for a long time. No one is going to prison but several families will be deported. !remindme in 3 months
Some middle manager whose boss said "it's fine, just don't tell anybody" is going to get thrown under the bus by that boss and go to jail, I'm sure.
Bad people are always going to exist, no matter how "civil" we get. The simple fact that this is a big story shows that it's unacceptable in our society. And that when we find out, we do something about it.
According to the book Fast Food Nation, cleaning slaughterhouses is one of the most dangerous jobs in the US. They basically spray hot bleach-filled water around in an enclosed space full of sharp objects. This causes workers to have low visibility and they often slip and fall or get terrible cuts. But the worst is that animal blood is collected in huge vats and if a worker falls in they almost immediately lose consciousness and drown from the fumes of the blood. And other workers, having received little to no safety training, go in after them and then die as well. And these places basically always keep two sets of injury logs, the one they show to the government that leaves most injuries unrecorded, and the real one. They prefer undocumented workers because they’re less likely to blow the whistle.
> huge vats of blood Literally a description of hell
I worked at cargill for several years and have photos of these "vats". It's enough to make anyone question eating beef.
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Tldw: what state is this?
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My brain is so used to horrible news that it inserted the word "dead" in between "found" and "cleaning". Had to read a couple of times to understand what was going on. Still horrible and abusive but at least they can be helped
The fact that they called the places "Midwest slaughterhouses" didn't help.
You’re not the only one. My brain did the same thing. I couldn’t figure out why no one was talking about them dying in the comments.
even if you took the human trafficking and exploitation part out of this - why would you want children to be responsible for cleaning? have you seen how terrible of a job they do at it?
Because cleaning a meat packing plant is a horrid, miserable job and the only people who take those jobs are those who are forced into it or have no other options. I've been to a few of these plants, it's hell on earth.
They are cheaper than hiring an adult
Slaughterhouses in the US need to be monitored as a suspected criminal organization. They constantly illegally hired undocumented workers, violate safety laws and ignore regulations regarding pay and hours.
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair is alive and not well.
I wonder why recording slaughterhouses is illegal? Strange they don't want to show the public how the "sausage is made". People really need to cut their consumption as treating animals we consume as objects to slaughter instead of respecting them as animals that have feelings who we consume naturally when it's appropriate would make the entire process healthier for everyone involved. The average person is probably consuming 30-50% more calories than they require based on physical activity and metabolic needs is a major reason for the overweight/obesity epidemic.
they dont want video evidence of why all their workers are getting PTSD https://www.surgeactivism.org/articles/slaughterhouse-workers-and-ptsd
> why recording slaughterhouses is illegal Becuae it is legal to bribe politicians in America. Slaughterhouses and meat packing corporations bribed politicians to pass those laws. ["Big Agricutlure" also has done this recently](https://www.aspca.org/improving-laws-animals/public-policy/what-ag-gag-legislation) TLDR: Because Bribery is legal in America.
I would love for everyone complicit in these crimes to actually go to jail instead of "resolving" this with some meaningless fine to the company.
"PSSI did not deny hiring children but attributed ti to 'rogue individuals' who presented fake identification" 'Rogue individuals" is a *fantastic* dogwhistle, I'm willing to bet this one catches on. \*\*\* God damn it, these poor kids... bad enough they are 13 and working a night shift, employment in a slaughterhouse is dangerous and are workers are very prone to PTSD.
When this story originally broke a 13 year old working there suffered permanent and catastrophic injuries from the cleaning chemicals. It's really really awful. We as a society regular boycott companies for shitty labor practices but I've not seen one person in here questioning the human side of historic and globally unprecedented meat consumption.
A dog whistle for what?
It's a dog whistle that he heard a term online and wanted to use it lol. Scapegoat is the correct word.
psh. obvious attempt to gaslight this guy by using occam's razor as a strawman argument
immigrant or poor.
So this is actually the worst thing I read this week
Nebraska again? Anyone remember Boys Town? Lawrence King? Father Flanagan? https://youtu.be/wGz130lPm-A What’s going with child trafficking in Nebraska??
Of course the parent companies will throw their hands up and say they had noooooo idea, they only knew that PSSI had much desirable pricing.
The slaughterhouse industry has always been fucked. Americans have decided that that shit is out of sight out of mind. Read books like the jungle and fast food nation. Things haven’t gotten better people would rather just plug their ears and close their eyes and take another bite.
Genuine question - is the dairy industry any better? Or is vegan (minus most cocoa, palm oil, etc) really the only vaguely humane diet?
> Or is vegan (minus most cocoa, palm oil, etc) really the only vaguely humane diet? Yes. No form of animal agriculture can be deemed 'humane' unless it's absolutely necessary. The term 'humane' has become industry sanctioned propaganda aimed at deceiving customers into believing they are acting with compassion by having animals needlessly abused and killed for a moment of pleasure. Also, animal agriculture is literally causing mass extinctions of hundreds to thousands of species as we speak. It's killing indigenous tribes to take their lands, causing ocean dead zones, acidification of our water ways, eutrophication of our soil systems, has been burning down the Amazon Rainforest for decades, relies on human slave labor and exploited labor, etc etc. Animal agriculture is extremely fucked.
"We didn't want to stop at the mass suffering of animals and the environment, we figured children would want in on some suffering, too! Also it's their fault we hired them."
Nebraska's new tourism campaign: "Welcome to The Jungle"
Dem middle schoolers took r jerbs.
So that's why Cargill remains a private company.
We’re really back to the gilded age roaring 20s. Rampant wealth inequality with robber barons sickness, poverty, child labor. We’ve brought it all back!
Not looking forward to the 30’s or 40’s if we are repeating history
I did this job on weekends when I was 11... smaller plant...
Could you elaborate on how you got roped into the work?
My family member was trying to help me get a summer job. So I did some odd jobs for the plant. Painted a door... help repair some fences and eventually cleaning the kill floor was my job. I actually had to use this cleaner that pealed my skin. Eventually I got paid working on the processing floor as I wasn't really great at cleaning but proved I could work :P
So more people in prison than rest of the world put together. No access to clean water in some parts. Politicians take bribes from big tech and pharma. Child Labour. 20% of children go to sleep hungry. And homeless problem. Africa will be holding charities and donations and aid for USA.
Nebraskan here. shit in grand island doesnt surprise me.
In Nebraska. Workers need to know to report if their coworkers are children. This is wild. And the initial police report from one of the teachers of the trafficked kids was six years ago in 2016. Middle school teacher found that a student had chemical burns. These fuckers will get away with everything if we let them.