Many of them testified that Tyson encouraged and coached them, even provided written instructions on how to deal with various employment/taxation things as someone undocumented.
Asked about this at a press conference, and whether there were "any plans to issue fines, or charges/arrests against the company or management at the company who were very much aware they were employing undocumented workers"?
DA / prosecutors: "We have not discussed and do not have plans to do so at this time."
And to no-one's surprise, no "plans to do so" showed up later, or at all, either.
Tyson knows. They couldn't _not_ know. They seem to maintain an acceptable level of "plausible deniability" at least, and I've not seen any evidence that they're explicitly allowing it to happen, or even that it's their preference. It seems more like they _have_ to tolerate it. If they tried to aggressively stamp out their workers using false documentation, they'd lose a big part of their experienced workforce and would incur significant additional labor costs as the market adjusted to the change.
More to the point, those people aren't just going to shrug their shoulders and head back to their home countries. Many of them would just go through more complicated steps to get false documents that passed the increased scrutiny. Tyson would have to pay more to get workers. Much of that money would be spent by the very same employees obtaining and maintaining false identities, and the people they're getting them from aren't exactly upstanding citizens.
If anything, I'd expect a crackdown on illegal labor practices here to result in funneling more money to criminal organizations (i.e., "the cartels") and tying the immigrant community more deeply with them. It really looks like a lose/lose proposition from where I sit.
NOTE: None of the above is a comment on US immigration policy, or indicative of my personal position on how that should be handled.
I obviously do not condone the actions of Tyson here.
I don't see anyone justifying anything here.
I'm probably coming the closest to that, and I'm very carefully only trying to share my understanding that's based on living nearby and having at least some interactions with this community. I'm absolutely not defending or justifying anything; I'm pointing out that there are multiple perspectives here and that it's not quite so clear cut.
> Not to mention that where one finds illegal workers one tends to find child sexual exploitation because illegals don’t tend to report the crimes they’re victims of.
Please consider not using the term "illegals" to refer to people. "Illegal aliens" or "illegal immigrants" is at least marginally better, as it at least acknowledges that these are people we're talking about.
I'm not on the same side of this as most of HN seems to be - I hate to even bring it up, but it's relevant here to provide some background on my own views. I'm opposed to illegal immigration, "amnesty", and want to significantly increase border security. I'd summarize my overall position as wanting "A big, beautiful wall with big, beautiful open doors." Anyone who wants to come here should be able to do so, but we absolutely must know who is coming in, why, and be able to prevent known dangerous people from entering the country and disappearing.
None of the above is a reason to marginalize individual people and families. I don't go so far as to insist that people use milquetoast terms like "undocumented people", but I recognize that language impacts how we view things. These are people. Policies are driven by public opinion, and public opinion is driven by the language we use.
As for the point you're making, I agree. Much of these communities are living under the threat of deportation, and the rest inherits that distrust of authority. Crimes go unreported. We should definitely consider that when addressing issues that impact them.
Welcome to capitalism.
> they'd lose a big part of their experienced workforce and would incur significant additional labor costs as the market adjusted to the change
The second statement clearly disproves the first one.
Tyson could get Americans (TM) if they paid significantly more and moved them in to rural areas; but it’s much easier to employ cheap immigrants and act dumb.
Disclaimer: No judgement passed on immigrants, only on capitalism and stupid politicians.
Another potential outcome is that with the price of illegal labor practices increased legal labor would become competitive against illegal labor again. Which would probably increase the price of chicken, but would also mean that those working for Tyson legally would have a living wage again.
they are the best paying in the area because they win over competition by using cheap illegal labour. nobody honest can compete with that, so they break/move.
So naturally we talk about Americans being lazy and racist when they complain.
How is this related to the story? The story is about companies using children as workers in hazardous job. It’s illegal regardless of their documentation status. Iowa has proposed bill to to legalize exactly this. This is happening because companies don’t want to pay fair wage.
I mean; if the likely outcome was just losing their job these kids would probably have lied to the investigators too. The evidence here is they wanted to work since this isn't a slavery situation.
100 is such a small number in the grand scheme of things. There are much more than 100 children illegally employed in the US. I'd guarantee it. A lot of families need money.
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 adults – who had recruited, hired and supervised these children – tried to derail our efforts to investigate their employment practices,” said Wage and Hour Regional Administrator Michael Lazzeri in Chicago.
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.
> The children in question are already violating local labour laws;
No they aren’t. Their age was in company’s system and company ignored it. Also they are “children”. You expect a 13 year old on ideal behavior while grown adults at the company were knowingly breaking the law?
> 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
1. Software development is not a hazardous job, 2. You’re an adult.
Oh, I missed that. I thought they meant that the company had ignored the investigators flagging that there were minors employed. Yeah that is pretty bad.
Although I maintain there are going to be a lot more than 100 children illegally employed as cleaners in the US. Not everyone is going to be stupid enough to keep good records like that.
> Software development is not a hazardous job
Adults shouldn't be at risk of being injured on a worksite. The standard is supposed to be no lasting damage regardless of whether children are involved or not.
The article mentions 3 injuries, but frankly I don't care if they are injuring 18 year olds or 13 year olds; the problem is the injury not which end of teenager-hood a person falls. That is an issue, but it is an issue that is unrelated to employing underage workers.
The point is the minors working at a meat packing company are victims, it’s ridiculous to blame them regardless of whether they lied or not and in this case they didn’t. The real entity to blame is the company which allowed this to happen and got away with meager $1.5 million fine.
> I don't care if they are injuring 18 year olds or 13 year olds..That is an issue, but it is an issue that is unrelated to employing underage workers.
It is related because meat packing is a hazardous job and there are more chances of injury for a minor than an adult, regardless of the training. That’s the whole reason the law specifically has an age limit for this type of jobs.
Victims of what, a sudden rush of employment? Child labour laws are, at best, a statistical observation that the majority of children are better off being at school than going to work and it is safer just to insist than try and work out the edge cases.
It is appropriate that the company was fined in accordance with the law, they shouldn't have done this. But fact is that there are some kids where working at 13 will just lead to them having better outcomes than anything else. There are 3 victims here who were injured, beyond that there needs to be actual evidence before we start calling them victims. It isn't like at 17 they're victimised and then at 18 the scales fall from their eyes and everything is roses and sunshine. The line is a reasonable judgement call based on averages and estimated opportunity cost.
> It is related because meat packing is a hazardous job and there are more chances of injury for a minor than an adult, regardless of the training.
Depends on the injury I suppose, but my guess is that if they're stupid enough to have underage employees on payroll this company was probably not providing a safe workplace. I assume injuries are high across the board.
A kid probably is more likely to get injured in the workplace just by virtue of being pretty clueless and a lot more lightweight, I grant you that. But it is quite possible that these injuries say more about the workplace than the age of the injured.
We don't know that. The DOL hasn't said what system "flagged" the kids as potentially underage.
The real question is why so much trust in a company which has clear motive to ignore these red flags for the sake of profit.
Children did not, under their own agency, seek out exploitative employment. We recognize that, as minors, their nominal consent is immaterial in the face of the overwhelming comparative sophistication of adults and adult institutions.
The kids did not figure this stuff out; the adults in the room did.
There's not enough information here to know either way.
What system flagged them, when, and based off of what information?
https://www.kcur.org/news/2023-02-17/child-labor-packers-san...
I don't know about this particular case, but I don't know of any large business that's purposefully hiring children, or people not legally able to work in the US. They're hiring immigrants who are providing false documents.
If you're already using false documents and lying about your nationality, lying about your age isn't exactly a huge step. Why _not_ start working as soon as you can reasonably "pass" for the required age?
> Iowa has proposed bill to to legalize exactly this.
That seems like a different problem entirely.
Establishing a culture where counterfeit or stolen identities are commonplace makes it difficult or impossible to ensure the other labor rules are followed even if the company wants to do so. If the company doesn't want to do so, then it's even more difficult to prove intent.
"I had no idea that guy was 16. He said he was 19. Here's the driver's license have gave us! Here's his I-9! He said he was 19, how could we have known?"
The above could have been said by a company who was honestly unaware of the deception, by one that doesn't care, or by one that is actively marketing to and even "importing" underage immigrant workers.
> This is happening because companies don’t want to pay fair wage.
This seems like a third issue still.
In isolation, paying more would drive increased competition for the job; it would give people _more_ incentive to apply under false pretenses, not less.
It's also not clear to me that there is a native workforce in these areas for these jobs, at any rate of pay. Those jobs are difficult to fill because they're seen as low status, not because they don't pay enough. Even today, Tyson provides some of the best-paying jobs in the area where I live. I don't see how increasing that gap even further would change anything.
Oh, I know they know.
My point is that Tyson (et al) doesn't "officially" know. Their employees are providing documents, Tyson is submitting those docs to the government, and that's that.
> Describing it even as “open secret” makes it sound more secretive than it is in practice.
Knowing something to be true and being able to prove that thing is true are two very different things.
Excerpt from story: “Our investigation found Packers Sanitation Services’ systems flagged some young workers as minors, but the company ignored the flags.”
I'm a natural-born US citizen, and I opted not to get a RealID-compliant state ID. I have no need for it. I use my driver's license for most things and my passport card when I fly domestic. A RealID-compliant state ID offers me no benefit.
The point is that a state-issued RealID provides me with no benefit, so any amount of effort beyond "yeah, sure, I'll check this box" isn't worth it for me.
This, of course, have many other problems.
Fine the companies that hire illegal workers. I don't know why so many in this thread have some delusion that the companies 1.) are acting in good faith or 2.) aren't intentionally using illegal immigrants for cheaper labor.
Fine the companies and the problem will solve itself. Another poster in this thread mentioned a case where Tyson coached an illegal immigrant. Illegals wont unionize, demand maternity or workers comp; and if they do, you call ICE and pretend you don't know how they showed up.
Incentives and chilling effects.
Automatic 30 days in jail for everyone who oversaw a minor get hired, per day worked. If more than five minors or across multiple managerial departments consider it systemic and send all overseeing managers and their managers to jail for 30 days per minor per shift worked. Strict liability and mandatory minimums are effective against white collar crimes unlike crimes of desperation.
Over ten kids and the company should be seized, all management imprisoned and all assets auctioned off. Give the legal employees enhanced unemployment to bridge the disruption to their employment.
On the other side is the lack of enforcement on the employer side which a good segment of Rs ignore. Cut off incentives and fewer people will come.
I’m assuming you are aware that no country in the world has fences or patrols of their borders to any significant length, right?
The reason is both financial/logistical infeasibility, as well as bipartisan neglect. Without cheap labor both locally and abroad, the Western world would collapse overnight.
[1]https://www.cbsnews.com/news/title-42-immigration-border-bid...
[2]https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/19/us/politics/us-border-arr...
Why would we want fewer people to come ?
The article is about employing children - so it seems there aren’t enough adults to work there.
We should give out more visas to fill those jobs
Is it though? I'm absolutely an advocate for eliminating all visa/green card restrictions, but I would by no means say it's an easy problem to solve. There are a lot of downstream implications for unions, housing markets, education, Medicaid, etc. I think these are worthy problems to get to, but I absolutely understand why politicians would rather play dumb.
Can this also be more simply stated: Americans support this.
Indeed there are folks who support it like how they support Team Red or Team Blue, but if you go out on the street Billy The Kid style, I doubt many of them would want kids working in such terrible conditions.
Put these kids out of work, I'm sure they'll be better off with no money for necessities!
In seriousness, the way to reduce child labor is to give all children better options. Outlawing child labor has the effect of cutting off support for those who apparently might have had little other choice.
A) Would you favor or oppose each of the following as part of legislation to address the issue of illegal immigration? How about -- Expanding the number of short-term work visas for immigrants whose job skills are needed in the U.S.?
Favor - 76%
Oppose - 23%
B) Would you favor or oppose each of the following as part of legislation to address the issue of illegal immigration? How about -- Requiring business owners to check the immigration status of workers they hire?
Favor - 84%
Oppose - 16%
C) How important is it to you that the government takes steps this year to... [control] U.S. borders to halt the flow of illegal immigrants into the U.S.?
Extremely important - 43%
Very important - 34%
Moderately important - 16%
Not that important - 7%
To note, I am for completely open borders but even I can tell you that states not using e-verify and just requiring an I-9 is almost hilariously comical attempt at checking immigration status, as there's little authentication against fake info let alone stolen identity.
Everyone gets a visa, no one is illegal anymore - vox populi
If there were actual jail time for complicit managers, there would be no market for illegal immigrants.
0 - https://cis.org/Report/2006-Swift-Raids
1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_raids
The Denver Post used to have the articles online, but they've since been scrubbed.
Managers ?
Get for the CEO for wage theft / child endangerment
The Uniparty doesn't even require collusion, although it's not exclusive of it. Both parties can effectively collaborate against the interests of their voters through confluence of different interests sharing the same technique. At the same time, there's no way either isn't completely aware of what the other is doing.
What perpetuates this particular issue is that both sides of the Uniparty, for all intents and purposes, represent the same class of citizen whose interests are so divorced from the voters that even the petite bourgeoise isn't in on it since they are the ones whose best interest is to comply with the system as opposed to subvert it. That is unless they want to risk having the fist of God slamming down on their business for a quick buck. The only way I can see the Uniparty destabilizing is if they represented different economic classes. At best, they pretend to, but fewer and fewer people are buying that story anymore.
According to the article, the fined company was alerted they were employing minors in their hiring system, they just ignored it.
What? What evidence do you have for this assertion?
What about e-verify ?
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 legal right to work any specific job.
This is such an easy problem to solve, but entrenched interests would rather we all play dumb and occasionally slap a business on the wrist when they get too far out of bounds.
I’d be curious where these kids end up after this. My guess is they will not end up in schools but will rather end up doing undocumented farm work.