Slaughterhouse Keeps Disabled Workers in Squalor and Financial Exploitation for 30 Years

Perhaps you recall the late November post that discussed the ways in which slaughterhouse workers--particularly undocumented immigrants--are exploited and endangered in their jobs ("Slaughter: Deadly for the Animals, But Dangerous for Workers Too"). Mass killing and the cutting up of dead bodies is dangerous, dirty, traumatizing work, and few people want to do the killing demanded by people who consume animal flesh, dairy, and eggs, even if they're consuming all of these themselves (see also the post "Inside the Chicken Slaughterhouse: One Worker's Firsthand Accounts"). So the ones who end up in these low-paying, undesirable jobs are often the most vulnerable and the most desperate.

And animal agriculture as a whole is a system predicated on the exploitation (and killing) of those more vulnerable than those doing and supporting the exploitation; it is an industry predicated on oppression and the use, for our own benefit, of beings whom we deem lesser than us. So a part of me isn't even surprised at the news that came out of Iowa this weekend--furious and saddened, yes, but shocked, no--about one company's shameless exploitation of an especially vulnerable set of workers for the last three decades.

-Continue reading after the jump-

Following is the first section of a long article. Read the whole exposé. But don't take the government's intervention now as some sort of reassurance that the system is working as it should--this very same operation and this very same "housing" have, apparently, received state and federal seals of approval (or at least blind eyes) following other investigations. But the article notes that the Des Moines Register started making some phone calls just days before new inspections were suddenly undertaken and violations and despicable conditions were "suddenly" uncovered. This is one of the reasons I roll my eyes when people insist that animals raised, confined, and killed by humans are protected by state and federal laws; state and federal laws don't and can't even protect the fellow humans we supposedly care so much about--not when there's profit involved, not when humans want their meat and want it cheap, and not as long as we accept this way of living (and eating) that's based on the very idea that the more powerful should be allowed to exploit the more vulnerable for the supposed greater good of the more powerful.

Federal police, state health inspectors and county prosecutors descended on this eastern Iowa town over the weekend, launching a major investigation into the care and treatment of a group of mentally retarded men and ordering an emergency evacuation of the men's living quarters.

The investigation focuses on Henry's Turkey Service, a Texas-based company that for 34 years has employed dozens of mentally retarded men who work at the West Liberty Foods meat-processing plant in Muscatine County.

Late Saturday, the state fire marshal shut down the deteriorating building — known locally as "the bunkhouse" — that for decades has served as housing for Henry's workers. State social workers moved the 21 occupants of the bunkhouse to a hotel where they were expected to spend the night.

Officials from the U.S. Department of Justice, which investigates allegations of civil rights violations against the disabled, were on the scene Saturday night, as were agents of the FBI.

J. Bennett, an Iowa Department of Inspections and Appeals administrator, was in the bunkhouse Saturday and described conditions as "deplorable." Department spokesman David Werning said it appeared that the building, which is owned by the city of Atalissa, was heated solely by space heaters.

Since the late 1970s, Henry's Turkey Service has been shipping mentally retarded men from Texas to Iowa to work in the West Liberty plant. Henry's has acted as the workers' employer, landlord and caregiver — paying the men a reduced wage for their work at the plant and then deducting from their pay the cost of room, board and care. Payroll records indicate the men are left with as little as $65 per month in salary.

"My God, this is an embarrassment to the state of Iowa," said Sylvia Piper of Iowa Protection and Advocacy, a federally funded group that oversees services for the disabled. "This should not be happening in our state."

Kenneth J. Henry, who runs Henry's Turkey Service, declined to comment. "I'm not going to answer any of your questions," he told The Des Moines Register on Friday.

Last Tuesday, The Register asked mental health advocates and state officials about Henry's and the workers' living conditions in Atalissa. On Friday, state health inspectors, abuse investigators, county prosecutors and police were at the bunkhouse. The investigation intensified on Saturday with additional involvement by federal agents.

Their investigation is focused primarily on the potential financial exploitation of the workers, all of whom are expected to lose their jobs in the next few weeks.

State officials say the 21 men who were at the bunkhouse Saturday have worked for Henry's for at least 20 years. Keith Brown, 57, has lived there since 1979. His sister, Sherri Brown, said her brother has $80 in the bank after working 30 years for Henry's.

Payroll records obtained by the Register show that in January Henry's Turkey Service deducted $487 from Brown's earnings to pay for his room and board. The company also deducted $572 for "kind care," although the bunkhouse is an unregulated group home, not a facility that provides medical care or assistance.

I interrupt here to point out that later in the article, rent for the whole building is reported to be only $600--and the company was withholding pay from nearly two dozen men for purposes of "rent."

Sherri Brown said she recently asked company officials where her brother's wages and Social Security payments have gone and received only vague assurances that nothing was amiss.

"I'm angry," she said. "I want to get some answers."

Please continue reading this article for further details. Incredibly, there's so much more, including tales such as this:

On the tape, a woman who describes herself as a supervisor for Henry's asks dozens of residents at the bunkhouse a series of scripted questions [with apparently scripted answers] . . .

Throughout the tape, the residents sound jovial and talkative. The supervisor sounds bored, and at one point she cuts off a resident, saying, "Billy, shut up."

She later tells Billy he is a "pain in the (expletive)." At another point on the tape, she uses a racial epithet to describe someone.

-----

Photo: Harry Baumert, Des Moines Register