Wednesday was a difficult day for The American Independent News Network, which is the larger entity that operates The Iowa Independent. Our chief executive and founder announced two of our sister sites would close and their content would be moved to The American Independent.
A recently introduced bill could have far-reaching impact on the U.S. sugar industry, including American Crystal Sugar, a farmer-owned cooperative that locked out 1,300 Midwest workers on Aug. 1.
The chairman for Herman Cain’s Iowa effort says the campaign “relied more on the word of farmers than Washington regulators” in deciding to run an ad containing claims the Environmental Protection Agency says are false.
The Iowa Senate will remain under the control of a slim 26-25 Democratic majority when it reconvenes in January 2012.
U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin says he and Iowa Gov. Chet Culver weren’t expressing anger toward one another during recent heated discussions regarding the situation at an Atalissa turkey plant, but anger that something so horrible could continue for so long without government intervention.
“I don’t know where people come up with stuff like this,” Harkin said Thursday morning during a conference call with reporters. “Gov. Culver and I had a conversation about this. The anger was not between us, it was at the situation.”
“We were just both incensed that this could have gone on for so long under our noses — federal and state and local — and no one knew what was going on.”
Mentally retarded workers were paid as little as 44 cents per hour as employees of a turkey-processing plant in Iowa. The workers, mostly men, had worked in the plant for more than three decades, while rents for substandard housing (closed last month by order of the state fire marshal) were deducted from their pay. For most of that time the plant was owned by Texas-based Henry’s Turkey Service.
Henry’s is now the focus of several state and federal criminal investigations.
Harkin, who described the situation in Atalissa as “deplorable,” led a federal hearing on Monday with the U.S. Department of Labor to see how federal inspectors missed the obvious signs of worker exploitation. The Department testified that they have only three compliance officers to serve 5,600 employers and 424,000 workers with disabilities in the federal work program.
Even when exploitation is uncovered by the government, according to former DoL attorney James Leonard who testified at Monday’s hearings, companies are likely only going to be held accountable for back wages. There are rarely fines or other penalities imposed as incentives for companies not to exploit workers under this federal program.
Last week Culver called on Iowa lawmakers and state agencies to enact new policies and legislation that will “ensure that events like [those in] Atalissa will never happen again.” Specifically, Culver created a Dependent Adult Task Force to look into what has already happened and what the state can do in the realm of prevention.
Harkin said he applauded the work Culver had already done in the wake of the Atalissa scandal.
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