During Thanksgiving many organizations sent out turkey donations to help our troops, mostly to help the young enlisted service members who have family to support. Now, many of these organizations do this to help; however there are others that have the wrong intentions.
One company in question is HOUSE OF RAEFORD which is one of the largest poultry companies in the country. Basically this “Christ-centered” company has no respect for its employees or for the law in general. Nevertheless, the company constantly brags about its false achievements. Here are a few examples of the ways this company operates. On September 2012 the company announced that it had reached the milestone of “one million man hours without a lost time accident”. The truth behind this announcement is this company simply forces injured employees to keep working. If the injured employee returns to work the same day, it’s not a lost time accident and the company doesn’t have to report it.
We’re not talking about minor injuries. One of the cases was that of a woman whose arm got caught in a conveyor belt. Her arm was broken and part of one of her fingers was cut off. An injury that serious would certainly put an employee out of work for a while, right? Well, not at House of Raeford. That would make it a “lost time accident,” which would have to be reported as such. So, this injured woman was forced to return to work for the next shift. Since she didn’t miss
a complete shift, her broken arm and amputated finger didn’t have to be reported as a “lost time accident.” Problem solved.
James Mabe, the manager who reported no musculoskeletal disorders over four years, had an explanation for it: “Hispanics are very good with their hands and working with a knife. We’ve gotten fewer complaints,” and “It’s more like a natural movement for them.” Amazingly, in spite of having such lack of regard for federal laws, House of Raeford has received nearly $100 million in government contracts from the Department of Agriculture from 2006 to 2012 and now, of course, this “Christ-centered” bunch of law-breaking employee abusers is getting some
good press from the Air Force because of those 300 turkeys its FLOCK ministry is donating. Student Researcher: Jesus Martinez-Lopez, Indian River State College
Faculty Evaluator: Elliot D. Cohen, Ph.D., Indian River State College
Source:
Chris Rodda, “Needy Airmen to Receive Free ‘Turkeys for Christ’ from Law-Breaking Evangelical Slaughterhouse,” Alternet, November 21, 2012.
ETHICS ALERT
This company is highly unethical. If every company treated its employees like this there
wouldn’t be many employees left!
It’s donation of 300 turkeys to families of the armed forces only succeeds in underscoring the blatant hypocrisy of this company. The morality of an action must also be determined by its motive. In this case, however, we can see that in fact the company did not donate turkeys to the army to help people; its intention was rather to get publicity from the army.
Nor does this “charitable act” compensate for the damage that this company has done to its workers. Only the relatively few armed forces members and the heads of the company are benefitted while its workers continue to suffer.
This company treats its employees like objects or things, not as persons who have rights.
It exploits and abuses its labor force to maximize profit; it doesn’t care about the workplace conditions, or more importantly, about its employees’ welfare. It would rather let an employee suffer than to send him home or to the hospital just because it would spoil its record or cost money. To add insult to injury, its management is also bigoted and rationalizes and hides it cruel treatment with the demeaning stereotype that its Hispanic workers are skilled with knives.