A Mississippi poultry plant is being sued by a woman whose 16-year-old son died working there
A Mississippi poultry plant is being sued by a woman whose 16-year-old son died working there
The mother of a 16-year-old who died in a workplace accident at a Mississippi poultry factory is suing the companies that hired and employed him.
2 deaths from a machine starting up during maintenance? Plant needed to be shut down after the first one.
83Who the hell doesn't have lock out procedures for deadly machinery?
32This is the South. OSHA is communism.
21You would be shocked. People at my plant are bitching non-stop because the new owners eant to implement lock out
13Supervisors who don't want to get fired for not meeting unreasonable quotas.
5
the teenager, who immigrated to Mississippi from Guatemala years ago.
The child labor problem is actually an immigration issue. These companies know they can hire migrant children to do dangerous work because they think their parents will stay in the shadows out of fear of deportation. I'm glad one mother is fighting back anyway.
https://www.npr.org/2023/05/04/1173697113/immigrant-child-labor-crisis
81The child labor problem is actually an immigration issue.
Louder for the people in the back, please. It seems a lot of people are missing this.
29
In July, Duvan became the third worker to die in less than three years at the Hattiesburg, Mississippi, plant owned by Mar-Jac, a Georgia-based poultry production company.
In 2020, 33-year-old Joel Velasco Toto died after a co-worker “inserted an air-compression hose into his rectum,” the lawsuit says. In 2021, 48-year-old Bobby Butler died after becoming entangled in a machine he was cleaning.
This doesn't sound like a great place to work.
42WTF are these fucking malicious assholes thinking? Compressed shop air can be at hundreds of PSI and a small nozzle that can fit up an ass will turn it almost into a knife.
I hope that sick bastard caught a murder charge.
8People associate air under pressure with bicycle tires because they're ignorant.
https://youtu.be/xnyh78wjZ1o?si=YPtArwFgzWAliuSV
video for people who spell tires with a "y":
3I've got to find out what happened after work today.
1There's no evidence the murderer was charged, although there is some evidence it may have been manslaughter, not murder.
Article about Bobby's death, which also discusses how Joel's death has not gotten any updates since.
0
If it was possible the entire company should be charged with negligent homicide and dissolved for these kinds of patterns, but they probably will get fined or pay a settlement, so it's just a cost of doing business.
At my work place, with a shop full of dangerous equipment, 20 years ago a person was killed using a lathe and we still hear about it and have extensive safety procedures specifically because of that, and no one else has died or been critically injured since.
1
Jurgis recollected how, when he had first come to Packingtown, he had stood and watched the hog-killing, and thought how cruel and savage it was, and come away congratulating himself that he was not a hog; now his new acquaintance showed him that a hog was just what he had been-one of the packers' hogs. What they wanted from a hog was all the profits that could be got out of him; and that was what they wanted from the workingman, and also that was what they wanted from the public. What the hog thought of it, and what he suffered, were not considered; and no more was it with labor, and no more with the purchaser of meat. That was true everywhere in the world, but it was especially true in Packingtown; there seemed to be something about the work of slaughtering that tended to ruthlessness and ferocity-it was literally the fact that in the methods of the packers a hundred human lives did not balance a penny of profit.
- Upton Sinclair, The Jungle
Published over a century ago and tragically still relevant.
38In 7th grade a friend read that book for class, he was normally a very cheerful and joking sort of guy. After a few days of reading it he suddenly had the most serious and somber demeanor I had seen for a 7th grader.
3Over a century ago*
1
My friend used to work there, said he quit because working conditions were shit. He also said there were a bunch of people who couldn't speak any English (he's not racist, he said he assumed they were illegals being exploited)
Gotta love Hattiesburg
8Isn't the mother also partially responsible for letting her son work there?
-10I understand where you're coming from here, but we're experiencing a spike in homelessness across the country, driven by an affordability crisis when it comes to housing.
This does not mean the parent wanted to put the child to work. Some families literally have no choice, they already are working two jobs themselves, and don't have enough money to get by. If rent keeps increasing but their pay doesn't, they need to find a way to get more income to keep a roof over their head. If she's a single mom, getting attached to a man can be a dangerous thing, and so relying on someone else can be more dangerous long-term than relying on your kids.
Also, finally, most states allow teenagers as young as 16 to work, there are just limitations to how much they can work and what kind of jobs they can do.
Let's not blame parents who are literally struggling to keep a roof over their heads and aren't breaking the law as it's legal for a 16-year-old to work. Especially immigrant parents who are at a disadvantage in our justice system and at a disadvantage economically.
The thing that I'm a little shocked by is that I would assume work in a poultry plant would be considered work that's "too dangerous" for a 16-year-old. Once again, it's not the responsibility to the parent to be ensuring that every business their child could work for is following the law, especially when their child is old enough to work. Letting teenagers work dangerous jobs is a choice by the person who owns the business, and they absolutely have culpability in that. Far more culpability than a parent who apparently can't just assume a business will follow OSHA rules, let alone other laws.
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Permanently Deleted
-15I don't think you understand the leopards eating faces meme.
8This comment said:
Woman Sues Leopard for Eating 16-year-old Son's Face
FTFY
1
Wouldn’t a parent have some responsibility to know and understand where their minor child was working
-28I don't see any claims in the article that said the parent were unaware where their child was working. It would appear what they were unaware of was the failure to follow laws and regulations.
35I'm sure if the parent had just asked the company if they were a shit hole place to work none of this would have happened!
10I think this is the same child who submitted an Id for a 32 year old
-6
Some? Sure. But that doesn't absolve the businesses responsibility to safety.
6But then the rich owners might not make as much money. Let's get our priorities straight, here. /s
5
No it's clearly the fucking job creator's fault for not creating him a job at the cash register at the Chick-fil-A instead of the slaughterhouse
1#victimblaming
0Not my intention but I see and hear your point
1
This is not an unreasonable question and you do not deserve to be downvoted for asking it. I can't imagine what is up people's bonnets today.
-5If you read the comments, it’s because this sort of thing should never happen in the US. Lots of parents let their kids get jobs at 16, because they believe working conditions are safe because we’re supposed to have things like OSHA.
Blaming the victim and his mom instead of the company that killed a teen is just slimy, no matter how you look at it.
1