Henry's Turkey Service fine has no meat

It actually makes pretty good business sense to exploit workers with disabilities.

The returns are great while you're getting away with it. And if you get caught - well, the fine isn't so much.

In fact, it will cost the folks over at Henry's Turkey Service only about $174,660 in state fines for making illegal deductions from cognitively disabled Iowa workers' paychecks and failing to pay them minimum wage between 2007 and 2009.

Henry's Turkey Service brokered the employment of dozens of cognitively disabled workers at West Liberty Foods over four decades. News reports show the meat processing plant paid Henry's Turkey service as much as $11,000 per week for the men's labor, but only a tiny fraction of that money ever went to workers: $65 per month, about 41 cents an hour, in recent years.

The rest of the money went right back to Henry's Turkey to pay for room and board. Room being a bed in a rundown old bunkhouse with boarded-up windows and insufficient heat. As for board - some of the 21 current bunkhouse residents were found to be malnourished when the state fire marshal finally shut the place down in February 2009.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission figures the company, which operated labor camps all over the country, bilked those men in Atalissa out of at least $1 million in wages in three years.

That doesn't count the money they are accused of siphoning from the men's Social Security, or account for the allegations of physical and emotional abuse.

It was a deplorable setup - one that's difficult to put a penalty price on, maybe. All I know is $174,660 doesn't even come close.

Iowa Workforce Development had recommended a $1.1 million fine for Henry's Turkey's labor law violations. But an Iowa administrative law judge last week decided to cut the Texas-based company a break.

First, the judge decided not to count the illegal payroll deductions as their own set of violations. He knocked another 15 percent off the fine because the company acted in good faith. Another 15 percent because Henry's Turkey was a small business. Another 10 percent because Henry's complied with the law in earlier years of operation. The total deal? A whopping 85 percent off.

It's not over - a federal lawsuit against the company still is in play. Other agencies could follow up, too.

But as far as the state labor case goes, Henry's Turkey made out pretty good.

If you ask me, they're the wrong winners here.

Comments: (319) 339-3154; jennifer.hemmingsen@gazcomm.com