By Immigration Correspondent Emma Goldman
with Financial Editor Samuel Insull
There's a lot of bloviating these days by well-educated gasbags and ill-educated Republican hatemongers about protecting children from evils as disparate as library books about Billy and his two daddies or seeking health care for gender dysphoria.
When it comes to real issues of child abuse, whether it's sexual abuse at the hands of white Christian nationalist “pastors” or violence perpetrated by school and other police, we don't hear a peep from these valiant protectors of our children.
For example, where's the outrage at this story, from real reporter Maria Sacchetti at The Washington Post?
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| Triumph of deregulation |
The Grand Island teens had been hired to scour blood and beef fat from the slippery “kill floor,” using high-pressure hoses, scalding water and industrial foams and acids, according to the Labor Department in federal court records. They sanitized electric knives, fat skinners and 190-pound saws used to split cow carcasses, according to court records. Some students suffered chemical burns and were so sleep-deprived after working their night shifts that they dozed off in classes, according to a local prosecutor and court records.
These teens were undocumented children aged 13-17, working the night shift at a hellish slaughterhouse in Nebraska, which apparently did not want to pay wages sufficient to attract adults to perform the gruesome work.
The employer claimed piously that it was the real victim here, and was shocked, shocked to discover that it had hired 13-year-olds. How many 13-year-olds of your acquaintance look like adults to you? Of course, it could have verified the kids' identity but it didn't:
Packers has faced no criminal charges, despite evidence that it failed to take basic steps to verify the age of its young employees.
The company that hired these kids did have to pay a $1.5 million fine, which must have made a deep impression on its owners:
Packers is owned by Blackstone, one of the world’s largest private-equity firms, which is valued in the market at more than $100 billion. A Blackstone official said that company, too, opposes child labor and is “pleased that PSSI has resolved this matter with the Department of Labor.”
That's nice. By the way, it turns out that Packers just supplies warm bodies to the slaughterhouse, which is owned by another giganto corporation, JBS. They too have piously declared that they were shocked and surprised to discover that child labor was going on on their kill floor, while pocketing their winnings.
Surely, this is an isolated example and not part of a huge problem of employing undocumented children in dangerous factories.
Stop calling us Shirley:
The Times' first-rate account described the same story: contractors in charge of staffing hellish factories willingly overlook fake age claims made by children and hire them to perform dangerous grueling work for the benefit of giant corporations, like Pepsi and General Mills:
These workers are part of a new economy of exploitation: Migrant children, who have been coming into the United States without their parents in record numbers, are ending up in some of the most punishing jobs in the country, a New York Times investigation found. This shadow work force extends across industries in every state, flouting child labor laws that have been in place for nearly a century. Twelve-year-old roofers in Florida and Tennessee. Underage slaughterhouse workers in Delaware, Mississippi and North Carolina. Children sawing planks of wood on overnight shifts in South Dakota.
When caught the firms claim they were hoodwinked and are let off the hook:
The Labor Department is supposed to find and punish child labor violations, but inspectors in a dozen states said their understaffed offices could barely respond to complaints, much less open original investigations. When the department has responded to tips on migrant children, it has focused on the outside contractors and staffing agencies that usually employ them, not the corporations where they perform the work.
Why is it that giant corporations believe that they can egregiously violate fundamental laws like those keeping children out of killing floors with absolute impunity?
The answer is obvious: because for the past 40 years they have, through their wholly-owned subsidiary the Republican Party, rigged the system to achieve exactly this end.
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| St. Ronald of Bitburg: Child labor is freedom |
Remember beloved Republican St. Ronald of Bitburg? One of his most notorious quotes was “The most dangerous words in the English language are ‘I'm from the Government and I'm here to help.’”
This was received by all media as a brilliant populist crowd-pleasing statement, rather than an attack on our armed forces, police, and fire fighters.
But in reality it was heard by his funders and country-club buddies as a license to do whatever the f*** they wanted, including sending children to the killing floor, with impunity.
And they got that message. Just ask the good Republican voters of East Palestine, Ohio.
If anyone wanted to solve the problem of sweating children in factories, they could enact any number of sensible regulations. The Labor Department could require all employers with more than say 20 full time staff to use E-Verify to determine whether the 13 year old sitting in HR claiming to be 37 can be legally hired.
And there's an even simpler way, based on the principle of economic self-interest.
In lots of cases, when people commit crimes, or even if they are suspected of committing the crimes, their assets are seized as the fruit of the supposed criminal enterprise. These forfeiture laws are often abused and turned against the poor and powerless.
But what if they were used against the rich and mighty? What if all violations of child labor laws were punished by the civil forfeiture of all proceeds from their use, which would be the revenues the corporation earns from the sale of goods produced with illegal child labor? Then General Mills and JBS wouldn't be able to hide behind crooked labor contractors. Or rather, they would make the contractor hold them harmless from the costs of illegal child labor. Let's try it and find out!
If this requires a change of law, don't bet on anything changing as long as Republicans stay in power, in large part through the votes of those harmed by lack of effective regulation, like those living downwind of or in the same watershed as toxic waste derailments. And the Republicans depend on the financial support of plutocrats, like this guy:
Stephen Schwarzman, the founder and chief executive of Blackstone Group, also financially supported a campaign group – Georgians for Kelly Loeffler – that is alleged to later have published a Facebook ad that darkened the skin of Loeffler’s Democratic opponent, Raphael Warnock....
Public records show that Schwarzman donated about $33.5m to groups supporting Republicans in the 2020 election cycle, including $3m to Trump’s America First Action Pac, a donation he made in January 2020. Schwarzman also donated funds to political action committees supporting seven Republicans who, months later, voted to invalidate results in Pennsylvania and Arizona,...a spokesperson for Schwarzman emphasized that the CEO’s last donation to Trump’s presidential campaign was in January 2020, long before the former president was accused of inciting an insurrection, and that the two have not spoken “in over six months”.
Schwarzman’s spokesperson also emphasized that his assistance was “purely about matters related to economic policy and trade, not politics”.
But Trump engaged in controversial and racist rhetoric long before January 2020.... A spokesperson for Schwarzman said: “Of course Steve finds these statements objectionable and disagrees with them....The spokesperson said Schwarzman supported Trump during the Democratic primaries because he believed his “policy and economic agenda were the best path forward”.
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“They said they were 18!” |
Blackstone Group? The same Blackstone Group that owned the labor contractor who hired desperate undocumented kids to hose down the remains of slaughtered animals?
It reminds us of a 19th Century poem
The golf links lie so near the mill
That every single day
The children can look up from the looms
And see the men at play.
These days the golf clubs favored by rich s***s like Schwarzman aren't anywhere near the factories where exhausted children are exploited to give Schwarzman his eighth billion dollars.
Otherwise when it comes to rich Republicans getting away with sweating kids, the song remains the same.
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