You're Probably Getting Screwed by the Meatpacking Industry
Upton Sinclair wrote “The Jungle” in the early 1900s. The popular fictional book was based on things he witnessed when spent seven weeks in Chicago, touring stockyards and slaughterhouses and interviewing the community.
Sinclair hoped to bring attention to the plight of immigrant laborers, whose working conditions, he believed, amounted to “wage slavery.” Most readers, however, instead fixated on his descriptions of rotten meat, filled with toxic chemicals, dirt, sawdust and rat droppings, that went out for sale. He famously remarked “I aimed at the public’s heart and by accident I hit it in the stomach.”
Over a decade later, President Woodrow Wilson ordered the Federal Trade Commission to investigate the industry from the "hoof to the table" to determine any wrong doings. The FTC reported packers were manipulating markets, restricting flow of foods, controlling the price of dressed meat, defrauding producers and consumers of food and crushing competition.
In 1921, The Packers and Stockyards Act passed in Congress to prohibit unfair or deceptive practices, giving undue preferences, apportioning supply, manipulating prices, or creating a monopoly.
And that was the last time the meatpackers did something wrong… Just kidding.
Fast forward almost 100 years later. Today, meatpackers are more concentrated now than at any other point in U.S. history!
During the pandemic: 1) farmers were getting squeezed. 2) workers were working in dangerous situations for low wages. 3) consumers were paying the most they have ever had for meat. 4) Every single meatpacker around that time posted record profits!
The largest penalties went to JBS Foods in Grand Island, NE, JBS Foods in Worthington, MN and Cargill in Dodge City, KS.
These kids shouldn’t be working in dangerous situations or working overnight shifts, they should be in high school! The total fine for the 102 kids was $1.5 million.
In 2021, JBS made a record $65 Billion. In 2022, Cargill revenue jumped to record $165 billion and Tyson Foods’ ended that year with record revenue of $53 billion.
Do you think $1.5 million is going to deter these Monopolies from continuing to use child labor?
YOU’RE PROBABLY (ALSO) GETTING SCREWED BY:
SOCIAL SECURITY
Just as President Biden points out, many Congressional Republicans want to cut benefits like Social Security and Medicare. The good news is that Senators Sanders and Warren have a plan to improve Social Security payments by $2400 a year!
INCOME INEQUALITY
BIG TECH
Additionally, the AFL-CIO has a great report focusing on President Biden’s “worker-centered” approach extending to digital trade and the digital economy by placing the needs of workers, consumers and society ahead of the profits and interests of big technology companies.
FOX NEWS
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Standing Tall for All,
J.D. Scholten
