The New American Slavery: Foreign Workers

[josieposy]

My God.

[ttt]

This is absolutely horrifying. I don't even know which part is the most horrifying, although I suppose it's the fact that these companies are able to get away with it. The man that got sliced open and they were fined $100k that they STILL haven't paid?

[pixy0stix]

We want cheap goods. We want cheap clothes. We think this isn't happening here, or if it is it's because the workers are illegal. But it's not. They're not. This makes me feel so angry and helpless.

[msmerymac]

It's like every single part brought about a new and different horror. If you can't compare it to outright slavery, there are so many comparisons to virtual indentured servitude for rural companies (company store, company housing), sharecropping, and all kinds of other rules designed to keep people in a certain place.

[onthemove]

She fined their employer, but did not escalate the case or refer it to law enforcement. Indeed, Fraser said, despite seeing hundreds of serious violations, she never recommended a single case to the FBI, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or her own inspector general, all of which can bring criminal actions. “We didn’t do any criminal stuff,” she said. “If you see a problem, you don’t stomp out and say something.” Instead, she said, she and other Labor Department inspectors would ask companies “to agree not to hold people’s passports, not to deduct wages, etc. And hopefully they agree to that.”

WHY NOT?!?!?! I don't understand, are employees not empowered to do the right thing? Is the culture so bad that they don't care?

[Deleted]

So not much has changed since Sinclair's The Jungle :/

[WOT?*]

This is unbelievable. I would so like to think that was the case.

Unfortunately, this is totally believable, and horrific.