Son of Bitches

[liberty]

Turkey farm exploited, abused disabled workers: government

By James B. Kelleher

CHICAGO | Wed Apr 6, 2011 5:26pm EDT

CHICAGO (Reuters) - The U.S. government sued a Texas-based poultry company on Wednesday, alleging the business engaged in a pattern of unlawful discrimination against developmentally disabled workers over more than 20 years.

In a civil suit filed in federal court, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission charged that Hill Country Farms exploited and abused a group of 31 men with cognitive disabilities in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The complaint, filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa, alleges the company, which also did business as Henry's Turkey Service, paid the workers just $65 a month to gut turkeys for a processing plant in West Liberty, Iowa.

The defendants were contractors and did not own or operate the plant. Much of the abuse cited in the complaint was alleged to have occurred in Atalissa, Iowa, in a bunkhouse where the men, who were brought to Iowa from Texas, were housed.

David Scieszinski, the attorney representing the company, said he had not seen the complaint, and did not have an immediate comment.

In addition to the claim of discriminatory wages, the EEOC complaint alleges Henry's Turkey subjected the workers to illegal verbal and physical harassment, calling them "retarded," "dumb ass" and "stupid," and physical abuse including corporal punishment.

The complaint also charges the company restricted the men's freedom of movement, in one case handcuffing a worker, required them to live in sub-standard living housing, and failed to provide adequate medical care when needed.

The U.S. Department of Labor has filed a separate complaint against the company in the case, alleging violations of the federal minimum wage and overtime laws.

The EEOC complaint seeks a number of penalties including back pay with interest as well as compensatory and punitive damages.

Last month, the state of Iowa fined Hill Country Farms more than $1.1 million for various violations of state law related to the case.

The workers were taken into protective custody by the state of Iowa two years ago.

(Editing by Jerry Norton)

[dales]

Money again trumps the greater good.

[Lord Jim]

Here's a more recent article about this:

Turkey Factory Abused Disabled Workers for 20 Years

by Kristina Chew
May 10, 2013
2:30 pm

For more than 20 years, 32 men with intellectual disabilities who worked in an Iowa plant eviscerating turkeys were subjected to both verbal and physical harassment, housed in substandard facilities and denied medical care. From 2007 – 2009, they also endured “severe abuse and discrimination,” including being paid a total of $65 a month when they should have received an average of $11 – $12 an hour.

In a “historic verdict” last week, a Davenport, Iowa jury awarded the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) damages totaling $240 million (the largest verdict in the agency’s history) for disability discrimination and severe abuse. Each of the men was awarded $2 million in punitive damages and $5.5 million in compensatory damages.

The decision follows a September 2012 order in which a district court judge ruled that Henry’s Turkey must pay the men $1.3 million for “unlawful disability-based wage discrimination.”

Henry’s Turkey is based in Goldthwaite, Texas; the 32 men (who were in their 40s, 50s and 60s) worked at plants in West Liberty and Atalissa, Iowa. The conditions the men endured, and for so long, are unbelievable. They were frequently referred to as “retarded,” “dumb ass” and “stupid.” Their freedom of movement was restricted and they were not able to access medical care or to have cellphones. Supervisors were “often dismissive” when the men said they were in pain or had been injured. They were hit, kicked, sometimes handcuffed to their beds and made to carry heavy weights as punishments. They were housed in a 1oo-year-old schoolhouse infested with insects and rodents with inadequate heating and leaky roof; a fire marshal has since shut it down.

In the 1980s, one worker reportedly wandered away from the schoolhouse during a winter storm and froze to death.

Such treatment was in clear violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), under which “discrimination on the basis of disability, including intellectual disabilities, in terms and conditions of employment and wages” is prohibited and disability-based harassment is not allowed.

Just reading about the abuse the men were subjected to sends chills down my spine. With my own severely autistic son Charlie turning 16 next week, we think often and always of what he will do after school ends for him at the age of 21. We hope that he can have a job. But then, over and above the long efforts to teach him the skills and to find him an appropriate position (keeping in mind that the unemployment rate is consistently higher for individuals with disabilities), we have to make sure that Charlie is protected and has work in a safe environment and that other workers and supervisors do not take advantage of him.

As Robert A. Canino, regional attorney of the EEOC’s Dallas District Office which tried the case, says,

These men suffered isolation and exploitation for many years, while their employer cruelly consumed the fruits of their labor. Our society has come a long way in learning how persons with intellectual disabilities should be fully integrated into the mainstream workplace, without having to compromise their human dignity.

Canino also emphasized that the men “feel humiliation and suffer distress from their experiences even to this day.” I am hopeful that this historic case will have the effect of making the workplace and the world a safer, better place for individuals with intellectual disabilities.

Read more: http://www.care2.com/causes/disabled-wo ... z2TVNcEZ00

The financial judgment here seems a lot more reasonable than the one reported in the 2 year old story in the OP, but I don't understand why criminal charges haven't been brought against the individuals involved in this...

The conditions these people were held under amounts to slavery; the people who were involved in that need to answer for it.

[dales]

They will before a just God, Jim.

[Gob]

Hanging will get them there quicker.

[liberty]

What kind of sub human pieces of shit would treat helpless child like people like that? Please excuse the language I try not to use it, but it is still not strong enough.

Well Jim, it was new to me and my blood pressure; I had to chill fast.

[dales]

I hope each of these mentally-disabled men have a caretaker to watch over their new-found wealth.

They deserve every penny!

[Sue U]

You guys should really keep up. It's way more important to protect dirtbag employers than to adequately compensate abused workers, especially if they're physically or mentally disabled. It's the American way.

Publication Date 05/13/2013
Source: Associated Press

Landmark $240M EEOC verdict to be slashed to $1.6M

IOWA CITY, Iowa -- A landmark $240 million verdict awarded to 32 mentally disabled Iowa plant workers who were subjected to years of abuse by their handlers will be reduced to just $1.6 million because of a federal cap, attorneys in the case agree.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and Henry's Turkey Service agreed in legal briefs filed late Friday that under federal law, each plaintiff can only recover $50,000 apiece - a far cry from the $7.5 million a jury awarded each worker earlier this month. On Monday, one advocate for the men called the cap "grossly unfair."

Each plaintiff will also be entitled to separate back pay averaging around $50,000 under an earlier order in the case finding that they were underpaid by about $1.37 million. U.S. Senior Judge Charles Wolle is expected to enter a final judgment in the coming days.

Jurors found that Henry's, a now defunct Goldthwaite, Texas, company, subjected the men to years of abuse and discrimination at home and at work. Henry's contracted the workers out to the West Liberty Foods turkey processing plant from the 1970s until 2009, and oversaw their care at home and at work.

The men lived in a bug-infested, hazardous bunkhouse in Atalissa, a rural eastern Iowa community several miles from the West Liberty plant, and were subjected to verbal and physical abuse by their Henry's handlers. The plant was not accused of wrongdoing.

State officials shut down the bunkhouse in 2009 and transitioned the men, many of whom needed urgent medical care, into new housing. The EEOC then sued, alleging the men were abused and exploited for profit.

Jurors awarded each man $5.5 million to compensate them for their pain and suffering after a weeklong federal trial in Davenport, and an additional $2 million in punitive damages after finding that Henry's violated their civil rights. It was the largest verdict in the 48-year history of the EEOC and hailed by advocates for disabled workers.

But businesses that employ fewer than 101 employees, such as Henry's, can only be ordered to pay a maximum of $50,000 per worker for compensatory and punitive damages under the Americans with Disabilities Act, EEOC attorney Robert Canino acknowledged in his brief.

"The EEOC, therefore, understands that the amount of damages of $7,500,000 assessed and awarded by the jury to each of the 32 class members, while certainly an appropriate and meaningful measure of the actual harms suffered by these victims of discrimination, including but not limited to, the mental anguish, pain and suffering, and 'loss of enjoyment of life', must be drastically reduced in order to come within the stringent statutory limits for recovery," he wrote.

Canino asked Wolle to enter a judgment of $1.6 million, plus interest of $188,000. Each man would receive $58,885 in damages, under EEOC's proposal.

Separately, Canino asked Wolle to affirm his earlier $1.37 million order for back pay and add $283,568 for interest. Wolle last year found that Henry's for decades paid the men $65 per month, or 41 cents per hour, regardless of how many hours they worked, after excessively docking their wages and disability benefits for the cost of lodging and care. Meanwhile, in the last few years of their deal, West Liberty Foods was paying Henry's more than $500,000 per year for the men's services.

Each would receive payments of between $34,000 and $54,000, depending on the amount they worked. The law limited their recovery of back pay to two years.

Henry's attorney, David Scieszinski, agreed in a brief filing that each man's recovery would be limited to $50,000 in damages, and did not take a position on back pay or interest.

The drastic reduction in size could make it more likely that Henry's, now defunct, may be able to satisfy the judgment. Canino has said the EEOC will consider seizing more than 1,000 acres of Texas ranchland, which was worth between $2 million and $4 million when founder T.H. Johnson died in 2008 and transferred it to his widow.

Steven Schwartz, a disability rights attorney with the Center for Public Representation in Northampton, Mass., said the reduction in damages was an example of how arbitrary caps lead to "grossly unfair" outcomes in specific cases. While it may reduce the amount of compensation the men receive, he said it did not take away from the jury's assessment of their injuries.

"Terrible things happened to these men. The people who caused it did so intentionally and with an understanding of the consequences. The harm that the men experienced was worth $240 million," he said. "There's no change in that reality, as a judgment of the jurors as to the value of their lives and their bodies and souls."

Schwartz is representing five former Henry's workers in a separate case in which they allege that Texas authorities are failing to offer community-based living alternatives for the disabled. The men are seeking to get out of the nursing home where they reside.

(c) 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

These guys were lucky to have jobs and their employer even provided a place to live. What do they have to complain about?

Think about this case next time you think it's a good idea to slap an arbitrary limit on jury awards.

[rubato]

Per dgs they should only have gotten the wages they could negotiate for and had the mental wherewithal to secure payment of.

yrs,
rubato