vegan melting pot in hell

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http://veganschool101.blogspot.com/2008/11/melting-pot-in-hell.html

Melting Pot in Hell

By MARTHA ROSENBERG

Orthodox Jews and Latinos are clashing in Postville, IA. Somalis and Latinos are

clashing in

Shelbyville TN. Somalis, Latinos and Sudanese are clashing in Grand Island, NE.

And you'd

think it has nothing to do with slaughterhouses.

It's about prayer breaks during Ramadan, paid holidays, cultural clashes and

" assimilation

into the American melting pot, " say news reports. Not the $8 an hour knocker,

sticker,

bleeder, tail ripper, flanker, gutter, sawer, and plate boner slaughterhouse

jobs that even

Americans prisoners on work release won't do.

Since US immigration officials began plucking 2,000 illegal Latino workers from

meat

packing plants in late 2006, hundreds of Somalis have taken up the cudgel, pun

intended.

Unfortunately, it has led to new problems.

When Tyson Foods made Eid al-Fitr instead of Labor Day a paid holiday for Somali

workers at its Shelbyville, TN plant in August there was such a backlash from

other

workers, they had to reverse the decision.

When JBS Swift's Grand Island, NE plant gave striking Somali workers the

concession of an

earlier dinner break so they could pray at sunset, it sparked a counter

demonstration of

whites, Hispanics and Sudanese workers charging favoritism.

Prayer rights have conflagrated at the JBS Swift plant in Greeley, CO and Gold'n

Plump

poultry processor plants in Cold Spring and Arcadia, WI.

And the death of a slaughterhouse worker from TB at a Tyson Foods slaughterhouse

in

2007--the employee was reported as " injured while helping prepare an animal for

slaughter " --brought tempers to a froth in Emporia, KN.

" Was Tyson attempting to deceive the public as to the reason or cause for this

employee's

death? " asked a commentator on the Emporia Gazette's web site.

" When the Gazette ran a story that Tyson's was testing employees and none of

them had

TB…who was lying to us, the Gazette or Tyson's? " posted another.

Entries raising questions about the safety of workers and food products at the

plant

followed.

The plant has since closed.

Of course the Poster company for immigration abuse is Postville, IA-based

Agriprocessors, the nation's biggest kosher slaughterhouse, which lost half of

its work

force to an immigration raid in May.

Agriprocessors has been charged with illegally using child labor, physical and

sexual

abuse of workers, acts of inhumane slaughter, unsafe working conditions,

requiring 11-17

hour shifts with no overtime pay, paying wages below minimum wage and shorting

pay

checks.

Even Barack Obama commented on the Agriprocessors ethical black hole on a

campaign

stop in Davenport, IA, remarking, " They have kids in there wielding buzz saws

and

cleavers. It's ridiculous. "

But read about Postville since the raid and you'd think you were reading a

Steinbeck novel.

You'd think the robed Somalis and Hasidic Jews, " beetle nut spitting " Palauans

and

Guatemalans in post-arrest ankle bracelets as the Des Moines Register describes

them

were gathered for an international film festival instead of to disembowel

animals for $6 an

hour.

You'd think the Somalis and Palauans were in Iowa for the crisp fall air instead

of as the

result of a concerted campaign by Big Meat to hire two cheap labors pools

allowed to work

legally in the US due to special arrangements with the government.

The story is not about the niceties of religious observance, cultural

assimilation and the

wonders of the melting pot in small towns in America that happen to have

slaughterhouses.

It's about jobs that can only be filled with children, people with TB, African

refugees and

Pacific islanders used to earning $2.50 an hour.

It's about the fact that America cannot afford its cheap meat habit without

imported labor.

It's about what's for dinner.

Martha Rosenberg is staff cartoonist on the ton Roundtable. She can be

reached at

mrosenberg@...