The Latest | Immigration Iowa
Iowa punts on human rights
The Quad-City Times | Editorial
John Schultz Attorney Dave Scieszinski, employed by Henry's Turkey Service, walks in the driveway of the Atalissa bunkhouse where 21 mentally retarded men lived while they worked at West Liberty Foods. This photo was taken in February 2009.
Human rights took a big blow in Iowa in 2009.
Federal authorities abandoned prosecution of hundreds of immigration charges against the former top executive of Agriprocessors Inc., for the 390 undocumented workers detained and deported from the company’s Postville, Iowa, meatpacking plant in 2008. Federal prosecutors did win convictions for 86 counts of fraud. Agriprocessors ex-CEO Sholom Rubashkin will certainly serve prison time for defrauding lenders and the state. He will not serve one day for recruiting, transporting and harboring 390 exploited individuals.
Iowa authorities also have not filed any criminal charges for the exploitation of
21 mentally disabled men paid substandard wages to process turkeys at West Liberty Foods. No criminal charges have been filed against Henry’s Turkey Service, the employment agency that recruited, transported and harbored the men. No one else — not even undocumented workers — would have accepted the 41 cents per hour paid to these mentally disabled men.
Since the men were removed last February, the U.S. Department of Labor filed civil lawsuits against Henry’s alleging violations of labor law. State labor officials fined Henry’s $900,000. But authorities have a poor record of enforcing labor law violations. The Des Moines Register reported the federal labor department documented labor-law violations against Henry’s in 1997, 1998 and 2003. Yet no fines or penalties were imposed. Across Iowa, federal records of 797 labor law cases between 2003 and 2008 alleged nearly $5 million in unpaid wages owed to more than 18,500 workers. In 789 of those cases, the labor department ordered those wages to be paid. But just three employers were penalized, with all fines totaling $8,360.
Iowa has a tough human trafficking law that specifically outlaws the act of recruiting, transporting and harboring a person for forced labor. So far, that law has been used to prosecute two men who forced two Iowa teen girls into prostitution in three Iowa towns, including Davenport.
Meanwhile, no charges have been filed on behalf of the 21 Muscatine County men who lived in squalor in Atalissa, nor the 390 Agriprocessors undocumented workers. All of those workers were recruited, transported and harbored for exploitive employment.
The implication is clear to those inclined to exploit workers. Be wary of exploiting just a couple of Iowans. But don’t sweat mass exploitation of those brought to Iowa.
