Pardon my delicate city sensibilities but I don’t think children should be working in meat processing plants surrounded by death and danger.
Have they not read “The Jungle”? Pretty sure this exact sort of thing was addressed a hundred years ago.
the thing about The Jungle was that we were supposed to read it and think “people need better working conditions” but a shockingly large number of people read it and thought “we need some sort of filtering system in place to keep all those immigrant thumbs out of the sausage”
I aimed for their hearts but I hit them in their stomachs
I thought it was actually illegal for him to be working there? Maybe I misread another post.
You’re right, I hadn’t read that yet at the time I posted this.
Retraction: It appears that minors are not allowed to be working in meat processing plants, but that he was hired by an external staffing contractor who did not properly adhere to those restrictions.
hired by an external staffing contractor who did not properly adhere to those restrictions
All by design…
Removed by mod
I guarantee you the child was a migrant worker. This has always been about exploiting migrant children.
Removed by mod
Kinda doxxing myself a bit but we actually don’t have that many migrants in MS. Most of the ones I have seen as well tend to work family businesses and they migrated way before the new wave of immigration.
2% of MS population is people in first generation in the US, mostly people from Central America
First generation doesn’t mean migrant. Migrants cross the border to work but live in their home nation.
Migrants are people who migrate.
“Migrant worker” has a specific meaning.
This is not a hot take by me. This is just you not knowing what words mean
You didn’t say “migrant worker,” you said “migrant.” All words have specific meaning, that’s not a hot take either.
If only you had the context of an entire comment chain to pull from
Confidently taking about a completely different topic 🤦♂️
Do you live near this plant?
About 45 minutes out, I actually go to Hattiesburg pretty often too.
Now this is what Republicans really want.
“From their perspective, life begins at conception and ends at birth” -Barney Frank, 1981
no no they also what kids to work with out the need for parents to consent and to pay the child less then minimum wage
So no real info realesed yet on how he died other than due to an “accident”
They won’t be releasing anything until the depositions or criminal investigations force them to disclose all the grisley details.
That’s practically old age in the republicans mind
Should’ve been careful around those sharp talons.
That’s a good point. I don’t know anything about poultry processing plants, but is there dangerous (to human) equipment in these facilities, and why would a 16 year old be using said equipment? I remember working at Wendy’s and I wasn’t even allowed to use the chicken fryer at that age.
Republicans have been rolling back child labor regulations and protections in multiple states claiming it will save us from the labor shortage. I’m surprised it has taken me this long to see a story about the predictably disastrous results of this exploitative behavior. In the US capitalism is winning and the citizens of this country are losing.
July 1st, a 16-year-old died in a sawmill accident in northern Wisconsin. At the same time, the gerrymandered-as-hell state legislature is trying to eliminate child labor laws. Thank god we currently have a governor with a modicum of decency to veto the garbage.
“Immigrants will take our jobs!”
“No one wants to work anymore!”
“Let’s hire children to fix the labor shortages”
I worked at a Foster Farms processing facility, and even in just the shipping department there are machines that could take your fucking head off and other things that could crush you if you’re not paying attention (which is hard because it’s also dark and loud). The rest of the plant is just as dangerous, if not more so. It’s one of the reasons I quit.
Yeah, my money is on the kid being inside a machine that you’re not supposed to be in, plus not being properly locked out/tagged out. When you’re a kid and the boss says “go clean out the machine”, you don’t really think “hmm, maybe there’s a safer way to do this”, you think “boss says do it, so it must be okay”. You just don’t have the experience.
Pretty sure it’s just a Napoleon Dynamite reference.
I worked at what I would call a medium size plant, we processed 80-120k a day. There are a few minor crush hazards but honestly the biggest dangers would be accidents involving forklifts or trucks.
yes there are lots of sharp knifes and blades everywhere and fast moving conveyor belts.
I’ll say it like this, if a 14 to 17 year old wants a summer job fine, accept and understand that. Now here’s the problem with the article it only describes it as an accident and doesn’t give any information about what actually happened, so keep that in mind. If I had to guess this kid was doing something he wasn’t supposed to be doing, no I don’t mean that to attack the victim here. What I mean is probably a supervisor or someone told him to do something that he is literally not supposed to be doing because he’s too young to do it. Like I’ve worked a warehouse job and we don’t employ anyone under a certain age, but we had a cardboard baler and it says on explicitly no one under the age of 18 is allowed to operate. So that’s what I mean, is like chances are this kid either through their own actions or through being told by a supervisor, was doing something they weren’t supposed to be doing. Could have been the fall, could have been getting caught up in machinery, we just don’t know. And like this is a rural Mississippi town, I’ve been here actually there’s like a Sonic which I think would be a good summer job for kids, but there aren’t a ton of opportunities. But like something like sexing chicks on a poultry line like that’s a common job, checking eggs for quality that’s something they do and would be a quick and easy summer job for a kid. So while we don’t have the full details of this accident, and don’t get me wrong it’s terrible, it really is. I feel like they’re being a bit sensationalist with the headline here.
People down voting this clearly haven’t read what I’ve written here, so I’ll say it here for the kind of tldr, there’s a lot we don’t know about this situation, let the proper authorities do there job, I really don’t understand why CNN is even reporting on this tbh, but the news cycle has seemed a little slow lately.
You seem disturbingly fine with allowing children who legally aren’t old enough to listen to directions, or assume personal risk, to work in places where not following direction gets you killed.
accept and understand that
No, don’t accept and understand that. Question that and investigate the implications with a modicum of critical thinking.
Sensationalist headline? What are you talking about
Acknowledging that children are dying in situations they shouldn’t even be in is sensationalist, didn’t you know? We can’t be making people feel things, that’s rude.
Mar-Jac Poultry said the teen died from injuries suffered in what it described as an “accident” in an emailed statement to CNN.
“On the evening of Friday, July 14 an employee conducting sanitation operations at Mar-Jac Poultry MS LLC’s Hattiesburg, Mississippi poultry processing plant died as a result of injuries sustained in an accident,” the company said. “We deeply regret the loss and send our most sincere condolences to his family and friends.”
Seems like this child was being employed by this large commercial butchering plant LINK as a sanitation worker. The company, in its own public statement, has only disclosed this as an “accident” hence why no other details have come forward.
Mopping floors at a local grocery store for extra cash, sure. Working at a large scale commercial poultry plant is likely illegal under both Federal and Mississippi labor laws.
I’m not piling on. I just want you to get the sentiment your thoughts have echoed to other users. We don’t want kids working in these environments for summer jobs or otherwise.
This is not a wait and let’s see situation. That child should not have been working at that plant.
Which is really why I feel like no one bother reading anything I wrote to be honest. It’s honestly confusing. One of my main issues with the CNN article was just thin it had no substance to it to bother with reporting on. Like literally what you post it has more information than the CNN article. I think what a lot of people don’t understand is this is a rural f****** place without a lot of opportunities for people that a lot of other places in the US have.
