As a Liberal, I tend to sympathize more with the latter, not because of any ideological reason, but simply because there are so many more of them.

It’s not that it’s work Americans wont do- it is just that Americans won’t do it in slave-labor conditions. These companies are exploiting ‘illegals’ because they know their status makes it possible to abuse them, force them to work in dangerous conditions, underpay them, intimidate them…. it is (arguably) just one small step up from institutional slavery.

Koch Foods, one of the largest poultry suppliers in the world, will pay $3,750,000 and furnish other relief to settle a class employment discrimination lawsuit filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the federal agency announced today. The EEOC charged the company with sexual harassment, national origin and race discrimination as well as retaliation against a class of Hispanic workers at Koch’s Morton, Miss., chicken processing plant.

According to the EEOC’s lawsuit, Koch subjected individual plaintiff/intervenors and classes of Hispanic employees and female employees to a hostile work environment and disparate treatment based on their race/national origin (Hispanic), sex (female), and further retaliated against those who engaged in protected activity.1 EEOC alleges that supervisors touched and/or made sexually suggestive comments to female Hispanic employees, hit Hispanic employees and charged many of them money for normal everyday work activities. Further, a class of Hispanic employees was subject to retaliation in the form of discharge and other adverse actions after complaining.

All this alleged conduct violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The EEOC filed its suit (EEOC v. Koch Foods of Miss., LLC, Civ. No.11-00391 DPJ/FKB (S.D. Miss.)) on June 29, 2011 in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi after first attempting to reach a pre-litigation settlement through its conciliation process. The EEOC’s case was later consolidated with the lawsuit previously filed by plaintiff/intervenors, Maria Cazorla, et. al. v. Koch Foods of Mississippi, LLC and Jessie Ickom, Civ. No. 10-00135-DPJ-FKB. The plaintiff-intervenors were represented by Southern Migrant Legal Services, a special project of Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, in Nashville, Tenn., and Robert McDuff, of the Law Office of Robert McDuff in Jackson, Miss.

The three-year consent decree entered today by Judge Daniel P. Jordan III provides for $3,750,000 in monetary relief for the victims. In addition, Koch Foods will take specified actions designed to prevent future discrimination, including implementing new policies and practices designed to prevent discrimination based on race, sex or national origin; providing anti-discrimination training to employees; creating a 24-hour hotline for reporting discrimination complaints in English and Spanish; and posting policies and anti-discrimination notices in its workplace in English and Spanish.

“We commend Koch Foods for its commitment to settle this case, which contained serious allegations of harassment,” said EEOC Birmingham Regional Attorney Marsha Rucker. “The significant monetary award, the corrective measures in this decree, including EEOC monitoring, should prevent this kind of alleged misconduct in the future.”

Bradley Anderson, the EEOC’s district director for the Birmingham District Office, added, “We take allegations of abuse seriously. No one working in America deserves to be harassed in the workplace, and, as evidenced in this lawsuit, the EEOC will engage in vigorous law enforcement efforts to protect workers.”

Koch Foods is an international poultry processor that deals in fresh and frozen foods. Its corporate headquarters is in Park Ridge, Ill., and it has locations in Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee. Koch Foods employs approximately 14,000 people.

Preventing workplace harassment through systemic litigation and investigation is one of the six national priorities identified by the Commission’s Strategic Enforcement Plan (SEP).

The EEOC’s Birmingham District covers Alabama, Mississippi (except 17 northern counties) and the Florida Panhandle.

The EEOC advances opportunity in the workplace by enforcing federal laws prohibiting employment discrimination. More information is available at http://www.eeoc.gov. Stay connected with the latest EEOC news by subscribing to our email updates.

The filing by plaintiffs depict some drug company employees as driven by profits and undeterred by the knowledge that their products were wreaking havoc across the country. The defendants’ response to the motion is due July 31.

In January 2009, Borelli told Cochrane in another email that 1,200 bottles of oxycodone 30 mg tablets had been shipped.

“Keep ’em comin’!” Cochrane responded. “Flyin’ out of there. It’s like people are addicted to these things or something. Oh, wait, people are. . .”

Borelli responded: “Just like Doritos keep eating. We’ll make more.”

Borelli and Cochrane did not return calls for comment Friday night.

This is just one example among countless others- only remarkable in its carelessness and open arrogance. This wasn’t just a couple of bad apples, this was institutional, the intentional destruction of millions of lives, of entire communities. All that mattered is that it made the corporations billions and increased shareholder wealth- the damage that it did to the community only mattered as a metric of their success in market saturation.

Three companies distributed nearly half of the pills: McKesson with 14.1 billion, Walgreens with 12.6 billion and Cardinal Health with 10.7 billion. The leading manufacturer was Mallinckrodt’s SpecGx with nearly 28.9 billion pills, or nearly 38 percent of the market.

The states that received the highest concentrations of pills per person per year were: West Virginia with 66.5, Kentucky with 63.3, South Carolina with 58, Tennessee with 57.7 and Nevada with 54.7. West Virginia also had the highest opioid death rate during this period.

Rural areas were hit particularly hard: Norton, Va., with 306 pills per person; Martinsville, Va., with 242; Mingo County, W.Va., with 203; and Perry County, Ky., with 175.

In that time, the companies distributed enough pills to supply every adult and child in the country with 36 each year.

It happens over and over- car companies intentionally selling dangerously defective cars and covering it up, cigarette companies engaging in a calculated effort to cover up the health impact of their product, oil companies engaging in a campaign to bury climate change science with lies…

Unrestrained capitalism will always result in evil, because it will preferentially reward evil people. This is precisely why conservatives want to destroy anything that might serve to restrain capitalism.