Our View - Iowa's answer: Tougher penalties on wage violators
May 17, 2008

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The allegations filed against Agriprocessors in Postville are horrid. The warrant served on the facility in Postville includes accusations that show:


• Agriprocessors was notified of more than 1,000 discrepancies between names and Social Security numbers on workers' W-2 forms sent to the IRS between 2002 and 2005.

• One former supervisor said as many as 80 percent of the plant's foreign-born work force were in the country without proper identification or other work documents. He also said that the company's human resource manager laughed when the supervisor pointed out that three of the employees had the same Social Security number, and that some of the taxes deducted from the employees' pay were being deposited into bank accounts of persons unknown.

But as flagrantly and egregiously as the Agriprocessors owners seem to have ignored the laws against hiring undocumented foreign workers, the other accusations of work place abuse prove to be even more chilling. And the accusations make Postville, because of its largest employer, seem even worse than the old company towns of days gone by.

• A legal Hispanic immigrant, who was working with ICE, said he or she observed a floor supervisor put duct tape over the eyes of an undocumented Guatemalan worker and hit him with a meat hook, apparently not causing serious injuries. The Guatemalan did not want to report the incident because "it would not do any good and could jeopardize his job."

• The same source said his rent also kept being increased by his or her landlord and that other Hispanic workers reported the same increases were happening to others.

• The Iowa Department of Transportation audited a Cedar Rapids car dealership that was selling a number of vehicles to an Agriprocessors supervisor. The manager of the dealership said the supervisor was a "personal friend of theirs," and that they supplied a large volume of cars to the supervisor for resale to people in the Postville area. Employees said that supervisor coerced them and others into to buying vehicles from him or they would be fired or not promoted.

But the most frightening aspect of Monday's raid of the Postville facility isn't that it happened, but that some sort of government intervention didn't happen long ago. After all, as University of Iowa professor and author Stephen G. Bloom told the Press-Citizen, Agriprocessors alleged illegal hiring practice "has been one of the worst kept secrets in Iowa for years." Through the research for his 2000 book, "Postville," Bloom learned about and publicized how undocumented workers were working at the plant, how guns were being bought and sold on the kill floor, how poor the sanitary conditions were and how female workers were making accusations of sexual harassment.

The problem is that this raid most likely will result neither in substantive changes to immigration policy nor in increasing worker protections. In fact, the raid itself will do little to ensure that future raids won't be necessary. Nor will it offer any form of justice against the business owners accused of cavalierly ignoring labor law on multiple fronts. The raid merely

• provides Immigration and Customs officials with an opportunity to prove that they are getting tough and

• disrupts the lives of detained workers and their families.

Unfortunately, the fallout from the raid most likely will be renewed interest in passing flawed state-level legislative attempts that try to compensate for the U.S. Congress' failure to pass comprehensive immigration reform. The versions of such legislation proposed this year were rife with unintended consequences for legal immigrants as well as for law-abiding businesses.

Rather than focus on the immigration issues that are outside the authority of the states, the Iowa Legislature should focus on increasing penalties for employer wage violations and protecting workers from retaliation for reporting abuses. That would be the best way the state could ensure that companies like Agriprocessors aren't allowed to continue with "business as usual" when it comes to abusing workers without fear of significant reprisals for those who profit from such abuse.

Because statewide legislative action won't happen until next year at the earliest, we advise our readers to use their own economic power and stop buying the meat and poultry products made under these alleged working conditions.


The issue
• Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested 390 Monday at the Agriprocessors meatpacking plant in Postville.

We suggest
• While the U.S. Congress seems incapable of passing comprehensive immigration reform, one way the Iowa Legislature could help protect workers in the state would be to increase penalties for employee wage violations. One way Iowa consumers could help would be to stop buying Agriprocessors products.

What do you think?
• Send letters to Opinion Page, P.O. Box 2480, Iowa City, Iowa 52245 or e-mail to opinion@press-citizen.com.
• Post your comments directly to www.press-citizen

http://www.press-citizen.com/apps/pbcs. ... /805170312