A local Midwestern television station is carrying an ad that boasts Jennie-O turkeys for just $0.39 per pound with coupon savings. In a time of such economic challenges, tight family budgets press otherwise quality conscious shoppers toward what appears to be real bargains. $0.39 a pound is a pretty low price given the 2008 average price of turkey was $0.56 and a drop to an average low of $0.50 per pound in 2009. With U.S. turkey production totaling seven billion pounds in 2009, yielding some $3.5 million annually for turkey production in this country, the delivery of low price goods in the market is often done so through concessions of quality of life and sometimes life itself.
With the turkey industry commanding that kind of market share, it’s outrageous that this industry would also be inflicting hardship through employee wage theft. Considerable national attention has been brought to the issue of wage theft by Interfaith Worker Justice (IWJ), which calls on communities of faith, political leaders, social justice advocates, and community organizations to pressure government officials and employers who are responsible for ensuring justice in cases of wage theft, working conditions, and working conditions. A basic definition of wage theft is when employers do not pay workers earned wages upon voluntary separation from a company, do not pay overtime hours or simply don’t pay workers for work performed.
Low-wage turkey plant workers, particularly immigrant and refugee workers, struggle disproportionately not only because of language barriers and cultural discrimination; but, in this turbulent economy, they are commonly relegated to dangerous food processing jobs in order to support their families and contribute to the overall development of their communities. Often, even after having come to the United States to escape civil unrest, social upheaval, corruption, and otherwise life-threatening challenges in their countries, immigrants and refugees face an onslaught of deeply entrenched bigotry and structural racism in addition to unscrupulous wage theft practices perpetrated by employers.
Incidents of wage theft have been well documented and exist in a variety of industries. There is a level of callousness to wage theft in the turkey industry especially given the sheer number of immigrant and refugee workers who work for very little pay and perform arduous tasks on rapid-speed production lines.
A recent Pennsylvania job posting describes a poultry worker position to include the slaughter, cutting, trimming, deboning and packing, which are still done manually and require workers to stand for long periods of time in freezing cold temperatures on plant floors slippery with animal fat and other matter. The workers use knives, cleavers and massive electric hanging scissors to cut up the turkeys. For such dangerous work, a pay range of $8-$10.00 per hour is listed. Given what we know about this work, the very real threat of having earned wages go unpaid is just unacceptable.