A union? Don't you know that unions demand union dues? Wouldn't you rather use that money to buy a video game? Buying a video game sounds much better than stopping amputations and deaths at work don't you agree?

That is fucking insane. I've seen places get $10k in fines for not putting labels on pipes. Those machine should have been shutdown and not allowed to run if the operators were exposed to amputation hazards. That inspector must have been in someone's pocket

That's from the government. You can demand (and usually get) a fairly large sum of money for a work related amputation (the amount varies on what is amputated. A toe is less expensive than an arm or an eye. I haven't looked at the tables in a while, but there are generally agreed upon amounts for each body part in actuarial tables).

There even have been two different human rights watch reports (In 2019 & 2005) on the meat industry working conditions, but it still doesn't get much press

Don't worry we're also giving workers horrible PTSD too

As time passes, you get used to it. You feel nothing. You can imagine, if you kill a thing a 1000 times over and over, you wouldn't have feelings after a while. It kills you on the inside, an abattoir, it kills you. You can be full of blood, it will not bother you

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4841092/

Because the news is filled with what Trump says and thinks 24/7

Capitalism + deregulation be like

Yep, more than just moldy bread, and more than just Smithfield

One of the more surprising ways plastics end up in the food system happens on livestock farms in a practice called garbage feeding. Legal in 27 states, the practice is shown in a 2022 video taken by a maintenance technician at a grain elevator owned by Smithfield, where bread in plastic wrappers was being processed into feed. The video went viral, and an executive from Smithfield responded to say most plastic is vacuumed out onsite. The technician disagreed, but there is no agency that inspects or oversees the process to tell for sure.

https://sentientmedia.org/how-microplastics-get-into-meat/

I took that to mean that many incidents across the entire industry in the country, rather than at a single location or even for a single corporation.

We Banana Republiced ourselves...

Talking about Rand right?

Idiotic. I read Atlas just to read it, interesting story, not realistic in any way. I do wish all billionaires would fuck off to their own island or mars so they can die there when they realize they have 0 actual skills beyond grifting.

Rand also died on welfare so yeah.

I guess it's working as intended

The fine should be one bone from the CEO. Any bone. You pick. One whole bone. Better not make the same mistake a lot.

Upton Sinclair himself said "I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach"

Yes, but it's a bit more of an industry wide problem than just Smithfield. Slaughterhouse worker injury rates are super high across the US. Even outside the US, there's still sadly a number of worker exploitation issues in Europe, in Australia, etc.

Company might be hiding this information. NDAs and all that.

A lot of labor in slaughterhouses or for that matter construction, landscaping, etc. is done by undocumented immigrants. If they try to unionize the owners and coyotes can just turn them in to ICE. The reason republicans are so obsessed with the border is because controlling these unofficial immigrants/migrant workers is a form of labor discipline that keeps prices of otherwise untenable products like a lot of meat or seasonal fruit low. Dems in turn want an “open border,” because the neoliberal agenda means not letting borders get in the way of cheaper labor.

In the end, there’s homeostasis. Made possible by extreme violence by human traffickers, ranchers, border patrol, and plant owners. Enough get in to keep costs low, but not enough to fight for bargaining power. If we look at the characters in The Jungle, they came from immigrant groups being basically let into the country no problem. They could participate in strikes because they were “legal,” and eventually when the postwar consensus saw the American labor movement fall into a pit of consumerism, become white people rather than Poles, Jews, Slavs, Italians, etc. That’s not going to happen again.

I think in a society where things like this are flouted we could adopt the doubling of fines with increased inspection rates and no reset on that fine. Keep fucking around, now you're up to $1,000,000 each incident and inspectors up your ass every quarter.

Granted, ideally, since "corporations are people", the CEO's should be brought up on charges every time someone is maimed/killed.

Pay the families out of their would-be retirement since they'll be in jail anyways.

If you threaten their profits they'll stop threatening lives.

It sucks that it isn't two failures, and we're bringing in another company to do it -- kind of like how if I don't mow my grass, get cited, they warn about a 3rd party contractor at my expense.

Yeah, this is what they really should be fixing.

How many ravens was it now, eh?