Workers' reward changes little

In the most abstract of ways, justice was served last week when a federal judge awarded $1.7 million to 31 cognitively disabled men, former workers for Henry's Turkey Service.

It's likely just one more paycheck from the now-defunct labor broker those men will never see. A paycheck that, once again, is only a fraction of what they're believed to be owed. Sort of poetic, I guess.

And the judgment doesn't account for the hundreds of disabled men the Texas-based company emoployed and housed over decades - in Atalissa, in Ellsworth, in Story City or six other states at the height of the company's operation.

It doesn't change living or working conditions for disabled people who may be caught in similar arrangements even now.

For 40 years, Henry's Turkey Service employees drove crews of cognitively disabled men to nearby West Liberty, where they worked full-time jobs gutting turkeys for just $65 a month. They housed them in an old school building that, by the time it was shut down in 2009, was literally falling apart.

Muscatine County social workers took issue with Henry's Turkey Service's Atalissa operation way back in the 1970s. Newspapers reported on the controversial arrangement back then, as well. Even family members of the men who worked for Henry's Turkey admitted to those early reporters that the arrangements were crude. But back then, there were not a lot of alternatives.

Standards have, rightly, changed. Whether it was ever OK for a Henry's Turkey-type arrangement is debatable, but there's no question as to whether it's acceptable today: It's not.

When the Atalissa story broke for the second time in 2009, Atalissa's state representative, Rep. Jeff Kauffman, R-Wilton, told me if we hope to truly protect vulnerable adults from exploitative practices, we have to start some complex conversations - about government regulation, appropriate living arrangements for people with mental disabilities and regulating out-of-state businesses, for a start.

Three years later, we're still waiting for those conversations to truly take hold.

So while I'm pleased to see the judge's attempt to hold Henry's Turkey Service accountable in this small way, it's too soon for the men from Atalissa to start counting their money. If they do get paid, it will be too little payment, too late for a lifetime of work.

And no matter what money ends up changing hands, or not, it's too simplistic to call this week's judgment any kind of victory for Iowa's workers with disabilities.

Comments: (319) 339-3154; jennifer.hemmingsen@sourcemedia.net