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The owner of a meat business in western Michigan was ordered to pay $1,143
“Two months later, we wouldn’t even be here,” the judge said, noting that the teen soon would have turned 18 years old.
“Ionia County is a farming county, and I know a lot of people in this county view children working, sometimes around dangerous machinery, as part of growing up,” [the judge] said.
He said the boy was warned to never put his hand inside the grinder.
What the FUCK
And if conservatives get their way the victims ages will keep going down
He said the boy was warned to never put his hand inside the grinder.
He said the boy was warned not to fall into the thresher. Why did he fall into the thresher?
It's like one of those Ernest Hemingway one-sentence stories, that all by itself tells you 100% of what you need to know.
“Ionia County is a farming county, and I know a lot of people in this county view children working, sometimes around dangerous machinery, as part of growing up,” [the judge] said.
I married a farm girl and live in a small town surrounded by farming communities. This is unfortunately very true. Harvest time comes you need all of the help you can get to harvest everything before the weather destroys it. There's no easy answer to this problem as most people generally don't want to work on farms given the work conditions, and most small family farms can't afford to pay for the labor they need (and its gigantic corporate farms where the real abuse happens because there's no incentive to maintain the land or animals) Pretty much the only people willing to work on farms are the people who grew up on farms and people who can't work anywhere else (such as migrant laborers from poorer countries)
Until they start jailing the people hiring and maiming children, this will continue to be seen as little more than the cost of doing business.
So a hand is worth a little more than a thousand dollars... What's a whole body worth?
My father lost multiple fingers working in the 70s? He was paid 1700ish per each accident (twice)...this is downright cruel.
It is an average of the highest 39 paid weeks during the last 52 weeks of employment. The minimum death benefit is equal to 50% of the state average weekly wage in the year of injury. Payments continue for a maximum of 500 weeks, and it is tax free money.
So roughly 5 years salary, at least in Michigan.
https://www.workerscomplawyerhelp.com/blog/2021/12/workplace-death/
Should be able to get 50% of salary in that industry, for life.
Too bad the lawyers are going to take 40% off the top.
If you go by weight:
A hand is about 0.46kg
An average adult body is about 81kg
81÷0.46×1143
=> about 200.000$
Second question: I'm trying to sell my body at a steep discount, but still nobody's interested?
Great fucking job, the country which was seen as a symbol of modernization is rolling back to the 1920s.
Yeah, not surprising and not new.
I mean it's nice to see this getting some light and on this but honestly nothing new outside of crappy Republicans looking to get rid of parental consent to have these accidents happen.
I was one of these kids that worked at 14, with my parents signing off on the work permit, to keep food in the table and that check is honestly worthless since once you got the job all enforcement and checks are ignored outside of one rule. I've had a friend get his thumb caught between a roller at the age of 15 that he shouldn't have been allowed to work on, another of that suffered chemical burns. I've had my fair share of working machines that by law I shouldn't have been working at and had a few injuries but thankfully nothing maiming.
There were was never anyone who checked out enforced any of the rules and none of us ever complained because, well there's a reason were working these jobs and not a cushy retail job, and none of these companies ever suffered any meaningful consequences. The laws and enforcement were and remain laughably inadequate except the one rule as I've said, the hours worked. They followed the number of hours we're allowed to work because that's the only thing anyone ever really checked on probably because that would be the only thing that would trigger audits.
Over twenty years later and nothing has really changed and only getting worse thanks to Republicans.
Jfc. The fine should have been $1 mil with half going to the kid.
Fuck that. The kid will have an entire lifetime of the government taking his money. People should be in jail and the kid should be a multi-millionaire.
The fun part is that he now gets to be on disability for life. At the company's expense? No. At the taxpayer's expense.
Don't get me wrong, he deserves it, but it should be the company paying out for the rest of this guy's life.
The fine is $1,143 BTW
It's an inherent safety issue for minors to work dangerous equipment. I don't care how old or mature they are, they don't have the necessary judgment and experience of the average adult to safely handle the machinery. I've been doing safety analysis at work lately for processes with high pressure flammable gases, and I would evaluate an unsafe situation to be even more unsafe if a minor was operating equipment.
Learning to use machinery or generally dangerous equipment safely is a valuable skill for students to learn, but in a CONTROLLED environment under DIRECT supervision of a trained teacher. This is why we have shop classes. In middle school my teacher taught us how to use a bandsaw and drill press safely, and then directly supervised our first usage. After that we could use it without direct supervision, but the teacher still kept an eye on the area and was more than happy to shout if they saw something unsafe. Labs in science classes are also a great opportunity to teach students to handle dangerous things in a controlled environment.
Frankly it's unconscionable for any adult to approve this kind of work for a minor and a gross dereliction of responsibility. Did kids on farms use that equipment safely back in the day? Sure! But that doesn't mean we should continue the practice. And there's a world of difference between cold corporate training you on equipment vs your parents teaching you and watching you carefully. It's fucking disgraceful.
Adults have a hard time following safety guidelines. Letting a kid be around any potentially dangerous machinery that doesn't have an insane number of engineering controls is just negligent.
And no way they throw out an industrial grinder. So even with a good cleaning we've returned to the good old days where human flesh wasn't uncommon in meat production. Welcome to America
Personal responsibility! Ridiculous that this child wasn't more responsible and cost his employer 2 years of wages for a teenager
Oh boy, a fine!
Michigan should really have more uproar over this, this should be completely unacceptable.
You'd think so, but a good chunk of Michigan is still quite conservative, and stuck in their old ways as a result. When it comes to business bootlicking and self cannibalism, the Midwest only comes in close second to the deep South, and big businesses have exploited this since the very concept existed. They will not stop until we make changes at the state and federal levels, but conservatives will literally die defending their warped view of how things should be to make themselves rich.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
IONIA, Mich. (AP) — The owner of a meat business in western Michigan was ordered to pay $1,143 Tuesday after a 17-year-old worker lost his hand in a grinder.
Ionia County Judge Ray Voet said the accident was a “horrible tragedy” but didn’t warrant jail or probation for Darin Wilbur, WOOD-TV reported.
The teenager lost his hand in 2019 while working at US Guys Processing in Saranac, 25 miles (40 kilometers) east of Grand Rapids.
“Two months later, we wouldn’t even be here,” the judge said, noting that the teen soon would have turned 18 years old.
Defense attorney Howard Van Den Heuvel said Wilbur hired the teen, a high school dropout, as a way to help him.
He said the boy was warned to never put his hand inside the grinder.
I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Defense attorney Howard Van Den Heuvel said Wilbur hired the teen, a high school dropout, as a way to help him. He said the boy was warned to never put his hand inside the grinder.
I'm sympathetic to this, but he shouldn't have been working around dangerous machinery at all. Give the kid safer jobs, like fetching tools or mopping floors.