in the meat packing industry. According to Human Rights Watch, the industry in -
... the United States is failing on all these counts. Health and
safety laws
and regulations fail to address critical hazards in the meat and
poultry
industry. Laws and agencies that are supposed to protect workers’
freedom of
association are instead manipulated by employers to frustrate worker
organizing. Federal laws and policies on immigrant workers are a mass
of
contradictions and incentives to violate their rights. In sum, the
United States is failing to meet its obligations under international
human rights standards
to protect the human rights of meat and poultry industry workers.
The crux of the problem is stated in the report -
o
The massive influx of immigrant workers
into meat and poultry industry plants around the country means that a growing
number of workers are unaware of their workplace rights.
o
Because many of the workers are
undocumented or have family members who are undocumented, fear of drawing
attention to their immigration status prevents workers from seeking protection
for their rights as workers from government authorities.
o
Meat and poultry industry employers
take advantage of these fears to keep workers in abusive conditions that
violate basic human rights and labor rights.
o
U.S.
immigration and labor law and policy fail to respect and ensure the rights
guaranteed to all non-citizen workers, irrespective of their immigration
status, by international human rights law.
Yep, this is the problem. Employers flouting toothless immigration laws in tandem with the immigrant-rights groups which look the other way, because their power derives from rampant illegal immigration. Looking the other way allows these forces to exploit illegal workers and the subversion of our laws and soverignty.
HRW has the wrong solution, of course -
For immigrant workers, new laws and
policies are needed to ensure that their basic human rights, including
rights as workers, are respected whatever their immigration status. Law
and policy must also provide the same workplace protections as those
applied to non-immigrants, including coverage under fair labor standards
and other labor laws, access to the labor law enforcement system, and
remedies when their rights are violated.
Nope. New laws and policies need to be enacted to punish employers for hiring illegals and illegal immigrants need to be sent back to their homelands. When our laws are ignored, and the government, employers, and the illegal immigrant lobby subvert those laws, that's when the "human rights abuses" occur; we then become like the countries these people are fleeing and that affects our rights as Americans.
