Immigration Raid Reveals Dirty Secret in Meat Processing Plants – National Consumers League

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by Reid Maki, Coordinator, Child Labor Coalition

When Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents raided a Greenville, South Carolina chicken processing plant on October 7th, they arrested 330 workers and unwittingly uncovered a problem we at the National Consumers League are deeply concerned about: child labor. The agents found six minors working in the processing plant, performing one of the dirtiest jobs in America—meat processing. One worker in the plant was 15; five others were 16. They were involved in cutting wings and muscles on the poultry, very dangerous work that federal government’s child labor laws, as outdated as they are, prohibit.

Another immigration raid last May in Postville, Iowa, revealed that nearly 60 kids were working in a kosher meat processing plant. In August, the state of Iowa accused the plant managers of more than 9,000 child labor violations.

In August, I visited Postville and talked to a young man who had worked in the plant when he was 16. He spoke of arduous work, low pay, and routinely being cheated out of his wages. He said that when he complained to his employers about being cheated, he was told to quit. He revealed a scar on his elbow where he had accidentally stabbed himself working on the line. He said when the accident happened, his employers bandaged his arm and told him to get back to work.

Many states prohibit workers under 18 from working in slaughterhouses and meatpacking plants because the work is dangerous. The Charlotte Observer published an investigation earlier this year that found that poultry plants are filled with hazards. “Workers are surrounded by dangerous chemicals and machines. They stand shoulder to shoulder wielding sharp knives. They routinely make more than 20,000 cutting motions a shift, which can leave them with nerve and muscle damage. And they sometimes lose fingers,” reported the Observer’s Ames Alexander and Franco Ordonez.

The companies involved in the raids claim that they didn’t knowingly hire minors—that they believed the young workers to be 18 or older. Yet, immigration officials had no difficulty quickly establishing the teenagers’ actual ages. The former child laborer we spoke to in Postville told us that he wrote on employment forms that he was 20 but said he was sure his supervisors knew he was underage.

When NCL’s Executive Director Sally Greenberg testified before a House subcommittee hearing on child labor this September, she asked the Department of Labor (DOL) to conduct a targeted investigation of meat processing and slaughterhouse facilities across the nation to determine if large numbers of children are working in the plants. This month’s immigration raid in Greenville suggests that Wage and Hour investigators should take our advice and begin looking as soon as possible.

In addition to the concerns it raised about child labor enforcement, the Postville raid raises serious questions about ICE’s evolving immigration enforcement strategies. On Monday, October 20th, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a case involving ICE’s use of aggravated identity theft charges against immigrant workers who use someone else’s Social Security Numbers (SSNs) to secure work. ICE convinced—many advocates would say coerced—302 Postville workers to plead guilty to misusing SSNs by threatening to charge the workers with aggravated identity theft, which carries a minimum two-year sentence. The workers—many of whom were indigenous Guatemalans and seemed unaware that they had committed a crime—agreed to plead guilty to lesser charges and accept a five-month jail sentence, rather than waiting indefinitely in prison for their trial to start and risking a minimum two-year sentence.

In the case being heard by the Supreme Court, Ignacio Flores-Figueroa used illegal papers and was convicted of aggravated ID theft and other counts and received a six-year prison sentence, a longer sentence than some convicted rapists receive. Flores-Figueroa’s attorneys have argued that the government hasn’t proved that he knew he was using someone else’s identity—in many cases, undocumented workers use made up numbers, and no real person’s identity is actually stolen. The immigrant workers often do not know if the numbers they are using belong to someone else. In such cases, there is no intent to steal someone’s identity.

When President Bush signed the Identity Theft Enhancement Act in 2004, he characterized the law as an attempt to stop identity thieves who steal one’s money or credit or commit acts of terrorism—not immigrants taking “dirty” jobs that few Americans want. ICE’s decision to try immigrants or to use the aggravated identity theft charge to coerce immigrants into pleading to lesser charges is a relatively new strategy, used in Postville to great effect.

The Postville workers had very little time to discuss the case with their federally-appointed attorneys and decided they had no choice but to plead guilty.  They were “tried” in court in groups of five or six. Attorneys and judges were provided with scripts by ICE prosecution teams. As Erik Camayd-Freixas, an ICE-hired interpreter for the immigrants, has noted in an important essay about the raid, the men were “caught between hopelessness and despair,” terrified about what would become of their wives and children while they were imprisoned. Despite their guilty pleas, the workers, wrote Camayd-Freixas, did not seem to understand what a SSN was or how the numbers got on their applications. In Camayd-Freixas’s view they could not “knowingly” have used the fake numbers—a criteria of the charge.

In an editorial, which called ICE’s strategy “Dickensian cruelty,” the New York Times noted that “No one is denying that the workers were on the wrong side of the law. But there is a profound difference between stealing people’s identities to rob them of money and property, and using false papers to merely get a job. It is a distinction that the Bush administration, goaded by immigration extremists, has willfully ignored. Deporting unauthorized workers is one thing; sending desperate breadwinners to prison, and their families deeper into poverty, is another.”

Carried out with ridiculous overstatement (assault rifles and a helicopter), the ICE raid cost the federal government $6.1 million to conduct. Add another $2 million to house 300 prisoners for five months and the current tab exceeds $8 million. The raid caused profound problems for the town of Postville, which basically lost one-third of its population overnight. Businesses closed their doors. The tearing apart of families was both traumatizing and heartbreaking. Even if ICE is correct that the raids deter future illegal immigration, we wonder if the price is worth it. Is sending a message worth this kind of civic trauma?

The firestorm of protest over the Postville strategy has caused ICE to back away from using aggravated identity theft as a tool to get workers to plead to lesser charges in subsequent immigration raids. We hope that the next President will look at ICE’s strategy to determine whether the agency is out of control. We hope that in looking back at Postville, they will note one final irony: the Postville workers were processed for arrest at a livestock facility—the National Cattle Congress— in Waterloo. What does that say about how federal officials view these workers?

EFCA Gets Unfair Bad Rap in Washington Times – National Consumers League

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Last week, the Washington Times ran an editorial by Senator Jim DeMint, a Republican Senator from South Carolina and chairman of the Republican Steering Committee, that contained misleading criticism of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), a piece of legislation that would rightly restore the freedom of American workers to express their interest in unionizing.

NCL’s Reid Maki had a strong rebuttal for the Washington Times in a letter that ran today: “The senator portrayed EFCA as an attempt to undermine a worker’s ability to vote by secret ballot, but the truth is that corporations often use their vast economic might to undermine workers’ attempts to unionize with coercion and manipulative campaigns.”

As NCL and its labor allies know far too well, corporations often have the upper hand when it comes to the balance between workers’ interests and company policies. Unscrupulous companies are able to tip the scales in their favor by threatening to close factories, move overseas, or fire “problem” workers when the workforce shows an interest in unionizing.

It’s time for workers to regain their right to free speech, and that’s why NCL, which has a long history of supporting workers’ rights, supports the EFCA.

Amidst Economic Collapse, Corporate Abuses Shocking and Shameful – National Consumers League

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By Sally Greenberg, National Consumers League

While the financial markets’ implosion takes its toll on working Americans in the form of job cuts and lost wages and benefits, a series of events over the past two weeks has me shaking my head in disbelief. In September, the Federal Reserve Board extended an $85 million “bridge loan” to American International Group or AIG, the insurance behemoth, because it was considered “too big to fail.” This week, at a House of Representatives hearing, we learned that AIG’s 70 “top performers” (hard to imagine how you can have “top performers” in a company that needs an $85 billion bail-out, followed by a $37.8 billion infusion) – yes, a week after the bail-out – were sent on a junket to a California resort, where they managed to ring up $440,000 for rooms, meals, and spa fees. (Even White House press secretary Dana Perino described the AIG junket as “pretty despicable.”)

AIG also disclosed at the Congressional hearing that its financial products manager, whose reckless investments contributed to the company’s collapse, is receiving $1 million a month in consulting fees. And the AIG former chief executive who ran the company for the three years leading up to its demise is receiving a $5 million performance bonus! You can’t make this stuff up. A performance bonus to a man whose company now needs multibillions in federal assistance? How did we get to this place where $40 million dollars to one person in salary and benefits is no long considered outrageous? Why does one person need $40 million?

After AIG’s revelations about junkets and outsize pay packages for executives who failed miserably at their jobs, the New York Times last week reported that the Federal Reserve Board will provide an additional $37.8 billion to AIG to help it deal with a rapidly dwindling supply of cash. It wasn’t until this morning’s news that New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo demanded that AIG reign in corporate excesses (like multimillion severance packages to outgoing execs and junkets for top brass) that any official has put his or her foot down in the midst of the AIG bailout. AIG says it will comply with Cuomo’s demands – at last!

Where is the accountability? Where’s the outrage? It is no wonder that the hubris and arrogance of these corporate executives – whose incompetence led us to this situation – goes unchecked. Our regulatory authorities appear to be providing loans and other assistance with no strings attached.

You or I might expect AIG executives to be contrite, coming hat in hand to the House of Representatives, asking for forgiveness for their profligacy. Wrong. Robert Willumstad, CEO of AIG from 2005-8, said this: “Looking back on my time as CEO, I don’t believe AIG could have done anything different.”

My question is if the average working American’s dollars are being used to bail out poorly managed companies whose top execs grabbed millions, shouldn’t we expect some accountability? A system that bails out companies like AIG – whose CEO earns $40 million in one year and pays $1 million a month to a consultant who helped drive the company into the ground – is rotten to the core and badly in need of reform.

The National Consumers League believes in regulation and legislation that will contain such outsize executive pay packages. Our friends abroad – in Europe and Australia – are generous with their corporate leadership but don’t begin to approach the absurd and indefensible salaries American companies pay ours – regardless of whether they succeed.

With unemployment rates higher than they have been in many years, it’s unconscionable to pay someone who has nearly destroyed a company a $1 million retainer. With more than 2 million homeowners likely facing disclosure, and states and cities across the country cutting benefits to our neediest citizens, if American consumers are going to bail out banks and insurance companies, we have a right to expect accountability, including an end to the excesses of the past.

Fraudulent Text Messages? Just Delete ’em! – National Consumers League

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By John Breyault

When faced with spam text messages — also known as SMiShing – just delete the messages. That was the advice we gave to Nashville’s CBS Newschannel 5 in a story that ran on the issue earlier this week.  Click here to watch the full video.

While the estimated 1.5 billion spam text messages that will be sent in 2008 represent only a small fraction of the total amount of spam consumers receive, the problem is growing. Since 2006, the number of spam text messages sent has nearly doubled, likely driven by dramatic growth in text messaging use by American consumers. Even though most mobile phone consumers will receive very much, if any, text messaging spam, the cost of getting even a few is not insignificant. Given that U.S. consumers pay for text messages sent and received, combined with rising pay-as-you-go text messaging fees (currently at 20¢ per message on most carriers), the real costs of such spam can quickly add up.

The easiest way to avoid becoming a victim of SMiShing scams is to simply delete the messages. Do not call the number listed in the text message or surf to the Web address provided. You will likely be asked to provide sensitive financial information (bank or credit card account numbers) which the scammers will then use to defraud you. In particular, SMiShing scams seem to be targeting credit union, so be especially wary if you are one of their customers and receive these text messages. Other ways to cut down on SMiShing is to avoid listing cell phone numbers online (such as in online social networking site profiles), since scammers frequently use sophisticated harvesting software to comb the Internet for such numbers. If the problem is especially severe, cell phone carriers can block all SMS text messages to a consumer’s handset, though this will also block legitimate messages.

Consumers who suspect they’ve been a victim of SMiShing fraud should contact their financial institution and cell phone provider immediately. Also consider reporting the fraud to NCL’s Fraud Center, so that we can alert the FTC and federal and state law enforcement authorities.

Happy Birthday to Us – National Consumers League

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The Savvy Consumer Blog is celebrating our first year of fun in the blogosphere! Launched just about a year ago, in October 2007, we’ve been hard at work bringing news and nuggets to consumers around the globe. We’ve covered issues ranging from the importance of reading your bills, to swimming pool safety, things to think about when buying a home, avoiding fake check scams, advice for teens searching for jobs, and more!

And what a crazy year it’s been! With headlines about the foreclosure crisis and a scary economy, concerns about imports, lead, and toy safety, child labor abuses, and other hot consumer news, we’ve sure been busy! We’ve had a lot of fun doing it, and we want to hear from you! Tell us your consumer stories, and tell us what you think of ours.

Here’s to another year of fun and education at the Savvy Consumer blog!

Child Labor An American Issue, House Subcommittee Discovers – National Consumers League

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by Reid Maki, Coordinator of NCL’s Child Labor Coalition

Americans tend to think that child labor is something that happens in poor, third world countries, but there’s plenty to worry about in our own back yard, according to the witnesses at a congressional hearing late last month before the House Education and Labor Committee’s Subcommittee on Workforce Protections.

National Consumers League Executive Director Sally Greenberg, who also serves as co-chair of the Child Labor Coalition, told the subcommittee that DOL needs more resources to enforce child labor laws. “Every 10 days in America, a young person is killed at work. Every day, more than 100 young workers under the age of 19 are seriously injured or become ill from their jobs,” she said, adding that the number of DOL child labor investigations “has declined drastically”—the number of investigations fell by nearly half from 2004 to 2006. “The number of child labor investigations conducted in 2006—1,344—was the lowest in the last ten years for which we have data, and may be lowest in many decades.”

With fewer than 750 labor investigators for the entire nation, DOL is conducting so little enforcement the department has become a “paper tiger,” said Greenberg.

Norma Flores, a former child farm worker, testified about her early years in America’s fields harvesting fruits and vegetables. She and her sisters began working long hours when they turned 12 “during our summers and any other school breaks we had,” Flores told subcommittee members. “Full-time work weeks now meant 70 hours— including weekends—for weeks at a time with no days off,” she explained.

Advocates estimate that 400,000 children help their impoverished migrant and seasonal farmworker families in the fields each year. Exemptions to U.S. labor law allow the youth to work at younger ages in agriculture than they could in any other industry.

“One of the most terrifying moments of my life was when an airplane accidently sprayed pesticides over the field my family and I were working in,” Flores recalled. The farm contractor told the panicked family to move to a different field and keep working, she said.

David Strauss, the executive director of the Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs, told Subcommittee Chair Lynn Woolsey (D.-Calif.) that federal law offers working children like Norma few protections. Strauss explained that the law’s only requirement is that the teen agricultural workers “not work during school hours when school is in session. That is virtually the only restriction in federal law, along with a prohibition against hazardous employment for children 15 and younger.”

“A 12-year-old kid can work 12 or more hours a day during the summer, on weekends, or during the school year as long as those hours are outside of school time,” Strauss added. “I have spoken with teenage children of migrant families who worked after school until midnight during a heavy harvest.”

Strauss noted that kids pay a heavy toll for their hard work. They often leave their homes and schools to begin seasonal work before the end of the school year, and they sometimes return after the school year has already begun. Falling behind, they quickly become discouraged and, according to estimates, as many as two out of three drop out of school.

“Without a diploma, without good job skills, they often end up continuing the cycle of poverty their parents hoped they could break,” said Strauss.

Strauss reminded subcommittee members that legislation by Rep. Louise Roybal-Allard—The Children’s Act for Responsible Employment— would address the issue of agricultural child labor and level the playing field so that child farmworkers are treated like other children. The legislation would keep kids under 14 out of the fields unless they are working on their own family’s farm (in which case they would be exempt). Kids 14 and 15 would only be allowed to work in the fields if the Secretary of Labor determined that the work is safe.

Alexander Passantino, the acting administrator of the Wage and Hour Division who represented DOL, claimed investigators always look for child labor even when they are investigated other labor violations.

NCL’s Greenberg made several recommendations, including asking Congress to double the number of labor inspectors. She urged passage of the CARE Act to protect children working in agriculture, and she called on DOL to revise the “hazardous orders” to prohibit teens from working in dangerous agricultural jobs. Greenberg asked DOL to conduct targeted child labor investigations of agriculture and meatpacking, two industries with high injury rates.

Fast Food Chain’s Decision to Post Calories Great News for Consumers – National Consumers League

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By Sally Greenberg, NCL Executive Director

Last week, consumers of fast food got some great news: YUM! Brands announced that it will post calorie counts on menu boards at KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, and Long John Silver’s – all chains that it owns. About 4,000 of Yum’s company-owned stores will begin to post calories on menu boards now, and the company says all of its 20,000 stores will do so by Jan. 1, 2011, if not sooner.

Why is this great news for consumers? Because consumers want to know what’s in their food, including calories. For years, health advocates concerned about our obesity epidemic, including the National Consumers League, have been wrestling with the food industry – including sit-down restaurants and fast food outlets – to get them to post calories in a prominent place: on menus customers receive when they sit down for a meal or on the board you read when you order a burger and fries. YUM!’s getting out in front on this issue will put pressure on others in the industry to do the same.

Even Michael Jacobsen, the take-no-prisoners director of the organization Center for Science in the Public Interest, known in many circles as the “food police,” had this comment: “I never thought I’d say this, but I salute Colonel Sanders!

Consumers shouldn’t have to fight to learn basic nutritional information about the food they are eating. Ever tried to find out what the calorie count is of a burger at a fast food outlet? It’s like going on a treasure hunt. The staff has to search around behind the counter for the information. If you’re lucky, they will locate a sheet that lists the calories. Often times they can’t find it. Several years ago I lived in Australia. Every fast food item has a wrapper that lists the calories and other nutritional information for whatever you’re eating. I wondered why we couldn’t do that here.

The National Consumers League agrees with Michael Jacobsen of CSPI: McDonald’s, Starbucks, Applebee’s, and other major chains should follow YUM!’s example. YUM! is also backing legislation that would require restaurants to list calories on menus and menu boards. Good for them!

YUM! is ahead of the pack in taking a voluntary approach to what’s becoming mandatory in some places around the country. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger just signed into law a bill that requires chains in California with 20 or more locations to post calorie information on menu items by Jan. 1, 2011. A stricter form of nutrition labeling went into effect in New York City last July.

So this is the trend, and it’s good for consumers. No, not every consumer cares about caloric information in the food they eating. But plenty do, and they should have easy access to that information. YUM! Brand’s announcement last week is good news for consumers and, we can only hope, a harbinger of things to come in the fast food industry.

Meet the Honorable Richard Blumenthal – National Consumers League

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Since 1991, Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal has been defending consumers’ interests for an unprecedented five terms in office. Blumenthal’s aggressive law enforcement for consumer protection, environmental stewardship, labor rights and personal privacy, has helped reshape the role of state attorneys general nationwide, has recovered hundreds of millions of dollars for Connecticut taxpayers and consumers each year — AND has earned him one of two 2008 Trumpeter Awards from the National Consumers League.

Like fellow recipient Barbara Ehrenreich, Richard Blumenthal is being honored with NCL’s highest award for his career-long dedication to guarding the interests of consumers and workers against harm. Blumenthal lead the national fight against Big Tobacco to stop deceptive marketing aimed at children and for reforms in the health insurance industry to ensure coverage and lower costs.

He has worked relentlessly to eradicate corruption in state government, make state contracting accountable, fair, honest and transparent, and to battle unfair utility rate charges, air pollution causing acid rain and other environmental wrongdoing, and scams and frauds victimizing consumers.

We will proudly present Blumenthal with the Trumpeter Award tonight in Washington, DC, before everybody tunes in to the first VP Debate. Check back soon for photos from the event!

Meet John Breyault – National Consumers League

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by John Breyault, NCL VP, Public Policy Telecommunications and Fraud

Hello to you all, fellow Savvy Consumer Blog readers! I’m the “new guy” here at the National Consumers League. At NCL, I’ll be coordinating the League’s policy activities and managing the National Consumers League’s Fraud Center and the Alliance Against Fraud coalition in my position as Vice President of Public Policy, Telecommunications, and Fraud.

While I’m new to the position, I have been a fan of NCL for many years through my work as Research Director of the non-profit Telecommunications Research and Action Center (TRAC). In my five years at TRAC, I educated and advocated on behalf of residential and small business consumers of communications services. As such, I became well-versed in all things related to telecom and broadband policy, where I developed an intense love-hate relationship with the minutiae of tariff sheets, ex parte filings, and – yes – even EULA’s.

Concurrent with my role at TRAC, I was also Director, Research at Amplify Public Affairs where I helped launch one of the public affairs industry’s first blogger relations practices (which should serve me well with this blog!). I also designed and implemented issue campaigns using online social networks such as MySpace and Facebook and even virtual worlds like Second Life.

I’m very excited to be joining the League at this important moment in its history. With a new Administration set to take office, the next few months will be a critical time to help shape the future of consumer-friendly policies in Washington. The old saying “you never get a second chance to make a first impression” holds true in policy work as well. Relationships with the new occupants of the White House will be forged. New Members of Congress and agency officials will need to be educated to make sure that the 111th Congress keeps the interests of consumers in mind. In short, the next few months are full of possibilities for the League and I’m proud to have this opportunity be a part of it.

Going forward, I’m looking forward to keeping up a regular posting schedule to keep everyone up to date on the League’s policy activities here in Washington. I’ll also be discussing some of the important consumer news that never seems to make it into the newspapers and evening news. Please do feel free to post comments or drop me a line directly at johnb@nclnet.org.

Trumpeter Honoree: Barbara Ehrenreich – National Consumers League

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Did you know that Barbara Ehrenreich, the author of more than a dozen books on a variety of social issues, was a chemistry major at Reed College, in Portland, Oregon? The daughter of a miner in Butte, Montana, Barbara got into grad school at Rockefeller University with the intention of studying theoretical physics. She bounced around, switching to molecular biology, and, later, cell biology, which she got her PhD in.

According to an “About Barbara” page written by the author at her Web site, it was the anti-Vietnam war movement that made her realize that she wasn’t made for a life of laboratory work after all. She joined a New York-based nonprofit org, where she got involved in investigative journalism, and the rest is history – an amazing biographical history of Barbara’s transition to author and activist. Today, she is the author of 14 books

Tomorrow night, the National Consumers League will honor Barbara with its highest honor, the Trumpeter Award, for her career of service to consumers and workers. Barbara has lifted the voice of workers’ concerns with years of activism on health care, peace, women’s rights, and economic justice, and we are thrilled to honor her tomorrow night. Her 2001 book, Nickel and Dimed, is an examination of working-class poverty, following her own attempt to live on minimum wage, and it is now required reading at more than 600 colleges and universities.

For those of you who can’t join us, we’ll take pictures! And check back tomorrow to learn more about Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal and why we’re honoring him this year as well.