INTRODUCTION
The purpose of this report is to discuss my opinion on the question “Do I agree with the recommendations of the Human Rights Watch (HRW) in regards to work safety particularly when it comes to immigrant workers?” I will provide information on past and current safety related issues as they apply to the meat packing industry and immigrant workers. I will discuss the recommendations of the HRW. I will provide my opinion and consider some of the utilitarian and deontological considerations, and conclude this report with a brief summary of the entire analysis, highlighting some of the most significant parts that the report contains
HISTORY
“In 1906, Upton Sinclair's novel "The Jungle" uncovered harrowing conditions inside America's meat packing plants and initiated a period of transformation in the nation's meat industry. The Pure Food and Drug Act and the Federal Meat Inspection Act were both passed later that year, and labor organizations slowly began to improve the conditions under which the country's meat packers toiled. But some critics say America's meat business has been in decline for decades and that the poor conditions found in slaughterhouses and packing facilities today are often little better than those described by Sinclair a century ago.” (PBS, 2006) From the 1930’s to the 1980’s trade unions such as the United Packinghouse Workers of America organized workers and improved working conditions and pay. Meat packing employees earned an average of almost $20 and hour in the 60’s and 70’s. In the 80’s and 90’s new competition came on line and tried to undercut other union based companies. Iowa Beef Processors (IBP) sought to work on slim profit margins, increase worker speed and productivity and cut l...
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...S CITED
1. Meatpacking in the U.S.: Still a "Jungle" Out There? (2006), retrieved 4 Jun 2007, from: http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/250/meat-packing.html
2. Parker, Laura, USA just wouldn’t work without immigrant labor, (July 2001), retrieved 4 Jun 2007, from: http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/july01/2001-07-23-immigrant.htm
3. Rural Migration News, Immigrants in Midwestern Meatpacking, (October 1996), retrieved from: http://migration.ucdavis.edu/rmn/more.php?id=144_0_2_0
4. Schlosser, Eric, How to Make the Country’s Most Dangerous Job Safer (Jan 2002), The Atlantic Monthly, USA, retrieved 4 June 2007 from: http://www.mcspotlight.org/media/press/mcds/theatlanticmontjan2002.html
5. HRW, Blood, Sweat and Fear-Workers Rights in U.S. Meat and Poultry Plants, (Jan 2005)
retrieved 4 June 2007 from: http://www.hrw.org/reports/2005/usa0105/1.htm#_Toc88546710
Upon his 1906 publishing of The Jungle, Sinclair was coined as an avid “muckraker” when President Roosevelt addressed an audience in April of that year. When asked whether or not the novel provided a realistic account of workers conditions within the Chicago meat packing industry, Roosevelt accused Sinclair of being a liar in an attempt to discredit him. A large part of this was credited to Roosevelt’s personal distaste for Sinclair’s apparent link to the Socialist party but, Roosevelt was also unaware that Sinclair had worked undercover at the plant to gather first hand and accurate accounts. The Jungle shined light on the poor working conditions of workers in a meat packing facility. Throughout the novel, Sinclair gave gruesome examples of what workers went through each and every day. Each department of the facility was faced with its own risks and challenges, “There were the wool pluckers, whose hands went to pieces even sooner than the hands of the pickle men; for the pelts of the sheep had to be painted with acid to loosen the wool, and then the pluckers had to pull out this wool with
After the clean-up, U. S. meat is imported by many countries, opening fresh markets for the packers. Upton Sinclair is supposed to be. to have said that he aimed at the public's heart, and by. accident. He hit it in the stomach.
Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle,” gave the most in-depth description of the horrid truths about the way America’s food companies, “the only source of food for people living in the city,” are preparing the food they sell. “The Jungle” describes the terrible
In 1906, socialist Upton Sinclair published The Jungle, a book he hoped would awaken the American people to the deplorable conditions of workers in the meat packing industry. Instead, the book sent the country reeling with its description of filthy, rat infested plants, suspect meats processed and sold to consumers, and corrupt government inspectors. President Roosevelt became seriously concerned by the charges brought forth by Mr. Sinclair and determined the only way to protect consumers from unscrupulous business and unsafe food was to enforce regulation.
Upton Sinclair, the author of The Jungle, wrote this novel to unveil the atrocious working conditions and the contaminated meat in meat-packing workhouses. It was pathos that enabled his book to horrify hundreds of people and to encourage them to take a stand against these meat-packing companies. To obtain the awareness of people, he incorporated a descriptive style to his writing. Ample amounts of imagery, including active verbs, abstract and tangible nouns, and precise adjectives compelled readers to be appalled. Durham, the leading Chicago meat packer, was illustrated, “having piles of meat... handfuls of dried dung of rats...rivers of hot blood, and carloads of moist flesh, and soap caldrons, craters of hell.” ( Sinclair 139). His description
It’s something you hear about all the time, how people want to come to America for a better start, a fresh start, a chance to get rich and make it big. However, this book is showing that it’s not really as ideal as everyone thinks it is. The evils of big business, and the corruption that runs rampant is also a major theme in this book. There are multiple occassions when they shed light on what the packing companies were doing, and how it was harming everyone, not even just the workers. They would pay off government inspectors so they could sell meat full of cholera and e. coli, they would use even the most undesirable disgusting bits of the cows and hogs and can it and pass it off as food. There is one quote from the book that I think is a perfect explanation of this from page 119, “They were swindlers and thieves of pennies and dimes, and they had been trapped and put out of the way by the swindlers and thieves of millions of dollars.” They would work their employees to near death so that they could get the highest possible turn out, for the least amount of money possible. This theme is present throughout the entire book, it really is the driving factor behind everything
In “Crimes Unseen” Dena Jones illustrates farm animal suffering through many sources. She suggests Americans are not conscious of terrible acts and circumstances before slaughter occurs, but should be concerned. Society removes the reality that meat was living and capable of being scared and hurt. Laws for less painful death have been in place and had modifications; however, previous improvements from changes are speculatory due to lack of available information gathered. There are many examples of disregard for living beings and the laws protecting them. Workers, desensitized over time, show minimal concern for contaminants and none for animal well-being. Ultimately, increasing quantity and speed of animals killed leads to unwarranted suffering by improper stunning, skinning, gassing, and electrocuting. While seemingly improvements have been made, enforcing loose laws with limited support proves difficult. Furthermore, if cattle standards have been rais...
Oppression has always been a concept that humanity has turned its head too. Whether that means a country is being governed by a dictatorship, an individual race being discriminated against, or immigrants in a country not being able to find adequate working environment. Even today, big businesses and individual supervisors are oppressing many people, specifically immigrants in the lowest jobs available. Books like Fast Food Nation and documentaries like Food Inc. have brought light to the situation of the grotesque, dangerous, and immoral environment in which many people are forced to work within the American food system. Situations like the ones discussed in Fast Food Nation also brings to attention the ethical principles of the labor force. Many people, however, argue that this cheap and efficient labor is not only a product of the dominant capitalistic society, but also a benefit to the marketplace and the economy. The people in big business would argue that paying people less than minimum wage and ignoring the high cost of safety equipment is acceptable because it is saving businesses money, which gives them opportunity to expand. Today, there is often little concern for these issues due to society being ignorant, indifferent, and having false-beliefs surrounding the labor force in the food system.
Around the same time, journalists started to go undercover to experience first hand just how corrupt the system had become. One of the most influential mudruckers is Upton Sinclair, who went undercover in a meat packing factory and recorded his analysis of the conditions. Built off of the backs of immigrants, it is the very same people that are poorly mistreated but are the reason for the country's booming economy. Yet, a century ago, these migrant workers who devoted their health and time to the factories received a poor man’s salary. They worked long, strenuous hours in horrible conditions and would often get injured during the process.
In the early 1900's life for America's new Chicago immigrant workers in the meat packing industry was explored by Upton Sinclair's novel The Jungle. Originally published in 1904 as a serial piece in the socialist newspaper Appeal to Reason, Sinclair's novel was initially found too graphic and shocking by publishing firms and therefore was not published in its complete form until 1906. In this paper, I will focus on the challenges faced by a newly immigrated worker and on what I feel Sinclair's purpose was for this novel.
At the turn of the twentieth century “Muckraking” had become a very popular practice. This was where “muckrakers” would bring major problems to the publics attention. One of the most powerful pieces done by a muckraker was the book “The Jungle”, by Upton Sinclair. The book was written to show the horrible working and living conditions in the packing towns of Chicago, but what caused a major controversy was the filth that was going into Americas meat. As Sinclair later said in an interview about the book “I aimed at the publics heart and by accident hit them in the stomach.”# The meat packing industry took no responsibility for producing safe and sanitary meat.
Egg-laying hens are kept in small cages, chickens and pigs are kept in jam-packed sheds, and cows are kept in crowded, filthy feedlots.” The practices that factory farms use to raise their livestock is extremely unethical and have no remorse for the animal. “Animals on these factory farms are only seen as a number or an asset, they are seen for what they can produce and not for what they truly are (Robbins, P., Hintz, J., & Moore, S. A. 2010). However, factory farming is prevailing as a rising industry in America today, the consumption of meat, fish and poultry has risen by 50 pounds per capita in the past 50 years (Bittman, M. 2008). Would everyday Americans still be buying the products produced by these unethical organizations if they knew what was really going on. Recent images and horrific videos have been brought to the public eye by many Animal rights organizations on the issue of what really goes on inside a factory farm. The large Agricultural lobbyist have tried their best to hide their unethical practices and recently proposed a law that makes it illegal, to secretly videotape large factory farms. (Editorial Board,
This essay will focus my experience about working with meatpacking company. I will present the working conditions, exploitation, unsafe practices and mistreatment of immigrant workers that exists in meatpacking industries. In this essay I am theorizing how are members of immigrants treated at Gold’n Plump? This essay will express my memories about the years I worked at GNP.
Tom Regan, “The Case for Animal Rights,” in In Defense of Animals, ed. Peter Singer (Oxford: Blackwell, 1985), 21. U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Statistical Services, Livestock Slaughter. 2005 Summary, March 2006: USDA, NASS, Poultry Slaughter: 2005
Skinner, author of “Big Mac and the Tropical Forests,” also exposes Hardin’s all or nothing rhetoric. According to Skinner, “tropical forests in South America are being destroyed in order to raise cattle to produce beef for companies such as McDonald’s and Swift-Armor Meat Company (413).” Skinner’s argument supports Durning’s argument because Skinner states that the amount of beef imported was a “concomitant with this increase in consumption (415).” When North Americans import the beef from Central and South American countries they are making it where “Central Americans cannot afford their own beef” (415). From Joseph K. Skinner’s perspective we are actually the people on the outside of the lifeboat. Skinner states that, “the United States began to import beef, so that by 1981 some 800,000 tons were coming in from abroad, seventeen percent of it from Latin America and three fourths of that from Central America (415).” From the way Skinner looks at things, we are basically the people on the outside of the lifeboat. While Hardin states that the poor have pirate-like tendencies, Skinner believes that the Americans are the actual pirates because we are taking things from others for our own benefit. It is visible that Garrett Hardin is using his rhetoric to make the poor out to be the issue. After reading Joseph K. Skinner’s article and Alan Durning’s argument, one would believe that Garrett Hardin’s perspective is no longer