This must be my EEOC week. Here’s a small story from yesterday’s Times, via AP. It’s an awful story involving a Texas company. It wrenches the heart and begs the question, do things like this actually happen in the U.S.A? And the story is too sad to get wise-ass and cynical and comment that Texas is not the U.S.A.
I’ve bolded a few phrases that destroy my composure and belief in human beingness:
Iowa: Back Wages Are Ordered For Disabled Turkey Plant Workers
A Texas company that profited for decades by supplying mentally disabled workers to an Iowa turkey plant at wages of 41 cents per hour must pay the men $1.37 million in back wages, a federal judge ruled Tuesday. The judgment against Henry’s Turkey Service in Goldthwaite, Tex., is the third against it after the state in 2009 shut down the dilapidated bunkhouse in rural Iowa where the men had lived since the 1970s. The 32 employees had been paid $65 per month to work at a huge turkey plant in West Liberty, Iowa, after Henry’s improperly deducted fees for room and board, transportation and other expenses from their pay and Social Security checks, Judge Charles R. Wolle of United State District Court ruled. The pay had not changed in the 30 years they had worked at the plant. The ruling came in a lawsuit filed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.