https://apnews.com/article/meat-grinder-teen-loses-hand-26138ae622d99c088e29f16eafbaf16f
The owner of a meat business in western Michigan has been ordered to pay nearly $1,200 after a 17-year-old worker lost his hand in a grinder.
The fine is $1,143 BTW
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
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.
No legally, they're a juvenile, and legally, if they did something illegal, they would be charging them as an adult.
Correct but someone who is between the ages of 14 to 17 is considered a juvenile, and not a child. This dude was almost 18, in 2 months time, legally he's an adult, in 2 months time, he isn't going to magically mature into a less dumb person.
A bar that served alcohol to someone who was two months from their 21st birthday would still get fined for selling to a minor. The law is the law.
But somebody at that age shouldnt have to work a job that is operating heavy machinery like that. Obviously there's going to be frequent injuries when somebody young works in positions like these.
For what? Allowing 16 year olds to work isn't something new...most 16 year olds want jobs so they have spending cash and it allows them to experience becoming adults. When should someone be allowed to work? 21 for you? Or 25 so their mind is finally fully developed?
Look at how you completely avoided my question and rephrased it to fit your own question that you then threw at me.
Are you actually processing what I say and responding? Or are you just waiting for me to finish so you can say your part?
Found the libertarian.
Something tells me there's a reason we don't let 17 year olds vote, drink, have sex with adults and run for office
The age of consent in a majority of states is 16. Then another 7 states are 17.
Most big population states like Cali / Texas / Florida are 18 but Illinois and New York are both 17.
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?
Maybe portion it out instead of selling the whole thing at once? You'll find someone looking for a kneecap or a left ear more often than you'll find someone wanting the entire body
Basically the same you do with an old car to get more money out of it. But also more work and you need to be a lot more patient, have more potential customers, idiots among them or people trying to beat down the price. Hard to estimate if it's worth it. On the other hand it might be easier to get rid of the rest after you sold the most important stuff, kidneys etc. Maybe people are discouraged by having to buy the whole thing, but someone could be willing to get the rest for final evisceration.
Great fucking job, the country which was seen as a symbol of modernization is rolling back to the 1920s.
Because real life has consequences, he didn't follow safety rules and ignored what he was told. He was 2 months from 18, I'm guessing you would have just magically changed your mind had he lost his hand 2 months later?
No! I would have thought that a callous system left a young man fucking mangled. What a horrible world view you have. He was trying to do his job, poorly, sure, but he didn't deserve to lose a hand over it. There should have been safety procedures, and literal children shouldn't have to work such dangerous jobs while they learn about the real world.
You’ve got the dumbest takes imaginable. As if it’s okay for any age to have such shitty safety process control that someone could lose a hand by doing what is surely a very low wage job.
Lol says the guy who probably hasn't actually done any physical labor in their life. You white picket fence types are hilarious. The dude was told not to put his hands in it and fafo. Do you even know what goes on in a factory or a farm or a construction site? Tons of jobs are dangerous if you don't follow safety.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/teen-poultry-factory-child-worker-deaths_n_64b7ecbce4b0ad7b75f67af7
16?
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/feds-find-100-children-cleaning-slaughterhouses-pssi-rcna71171
13?
How young do like your slaughterhouse workers?
13 isn't legal, 16 is legal. I'm confused here, are you suggesting that 16 year olds shouldn't be allowed to hold summer jobs?
I'm confused, are you suggesting that it is good when the animal industry kills 16 year old kids for profit and your cheap meat?
Are you suggesting that it's somehow worse when it's a 16 year old and not the fact that someone died?
Are you suggesting they should kill kids younger than 16? I work in hazardous environment and there are many machines and tools where you are required to be of legal age and in many cases have had training with those tools. Using kids to operate deadly machinery, especially if its a holiday job and kill or mutilate them on a regular basis would not fly in my industry. Maybe yours is tougher and I look like a crybaby to you but most of you who don't give a shit don't stay very long.
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.
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.
Republican shithole states where children, especially those of minorities and immigrants, are literal grist for the mil
you're absolutely correct, no, it isn't which makes this worse, i can't read anymore fucking articles about how child labor is becoming the norm again, on top of everything else, it's all just too much so i assumed
FWIW, the incident in question happened in 2019, so it's not anything happening due to the current climate. And while the owner should have ensured the kid had a work permit, the kid was already a high school dropout, so might not have had any way to get a work permit legally anyway. At some point, people still need to eat. I've read several articles at this point and it feels like there's some grey in here somewhere that I just don't know enough to be able to form an opinion on.
While this is pretty awful and shouldn't have happened, I don't think I'd advocate that a 17 year old shouldn't be allowed to have any job at all. I think they should be paid normal minimum wage, same as any other employee, and there should be jobs that they can't do due to age (such as this one), but I wouldn't stop it altogether.
That said, I'm completely fine with increasing the fines for employing a minor in a dangerous profession though, which is apparently the charge that the owner plead guilty to. Fines for employers who break the law should be increased in general, especially when it puts workers in danger.
This happened in Michigan...a blue state...the fuck are you talking about. Fuckin hell you people are just as ignorant sometimes as the GOP you complain about.
On top of that, he was 17, 2 months from being 18. I started working when I was 16 like most kids do for summer cash and to learn responsibilities of money.
And yet he wasn’t 18.
Also, can you say it with me? You even said it yourself that he was 2 months away from 18. So please let’s just all say it together… he… was… not… 18! So.. he.. is… a… kid!
There you go!
You know, I appreciate the sentiment that the rule is the rule, and that's the stick we're going to use to fight these violations, sure.
But this style is tiresome. Lay off the demeaning tone.
That Supra idiot is all over this thread, saying the same thing over and over.
That demeaning style is 100% appropriate here
Also, Michigan is blue now. Flint and Snyder's "emergency managers" really weren't that long ago.
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.
We literally consider procedural/human actions to be one of the least reliable safeguards and don't even credit it as protection in semi quantitative safety analysis
Procedures aren't worth the paper they're printed on. Well. Until a manager wants to blame an employee for getting hurt.
I even knew that as a teen. I got a job at a place where they wanted me to use a meat slicer for sandwiches when I was 16 and I noped the fuck out when they tried to train me on it.
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
This child...was 2 months away from being 18. He wasn't 10. Most teenagers start working in highschool around 16, to learn responsibilities and the world.
I'm 35. You'd better believe I'd get more than 1k if I lost my hand at work. Why are you and others like you harping on him being "almost 18"? So fucking what?
and others like you
It's the same guy. He REALLY seems to want to defend the position of hiring 17-year-olds to do dangerous jobs.
This has to be the guy responsible for this. He’s all over the thread defending a company that wouldn’t give 2 shits about him
O I don't give a shit about the company, hell I agree they should have been fined more for their violation of the laws, but trying to fine a company for a workers idiotic behavior and refusal to follow proper safety is a stupid take. It's one that a ton of people here in this thread are all over. People didn't even read the thread really as most of them seem to think this dude was like 7 and working in some coal mine.
This business didn’t have work permits and was breaking the law by employing this kid in this way.
The business did the wrong thing. This kid paid for it with his hand. And the business pays what is probably less than 1% of their monthly gross.
It’s a strong signal that there’s no real Justice for these bastards. Next time, some 16 year old will lose his life.
Completely agree, they were in the wrong legally, but I'm not arguing anything on the business side. I'm pointing out that it wasn't some 8 year old. The told him not to stick his hands in a dangerous machine and he ignored that. Working with machines is dangerous if you don't follow safety protocols.
This is why we don’t have kids that age doing those jobs. They have impulsivity problems, so we start them with low risk shit like flipping burgers. Either the law means something or it doesn’t.
Working near a frier is just as dangerous. Probably more so considering they have to operate it.
The point is, when is it ok to allow someone to be in these environments? 21? 25? What about driving? That's more dangerous than working on a farm or any job.
Sure, but you don't teach someone responsiblity by putting them in a position to lose their hand.
So what job would you like them to start at? Young people work demanding physical jobs, this isn't new. The entire globe is run by the young generally.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/teen-poultry-factory-child-worker-deaths_n_64b7ecbce4b0ad7b75f67af7
16?
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/feds-find-100-children-cleaning-slaughterhouses-pssi-rcna71171
13?
How young do like your slaughterhouse workers?
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.
We need to revive the tax credit from COVID that heavily subsidized child rearing. The only situation where kids need to be working is if their family can't put food on the table. It's disgraceful that's even the case in the US. The tax credit would hopefully eliminate the need for teenagers in poverty to support their family.
The kid is a high school dropout. What's he going to do with no education and just one hand? How is he supposed to make a living?
How is the type of accident even possible in 2023? We've had a century to evolve industrial safety.
Lastly, that judge is an asshole. "2 months later and we wouldn't even be here" ... irrelevant. We had to draw the line somewhere. That line is there to protect the vulnerable.
And that nonsense about dangerous machinery just part of growing up? Not in a long, long time. We used to have a lot more kids back then too, because we expected we'd lose some to disease or injury.
We evolved.
I mean, the judge hasn't, but the world has.
