Upton Sinclair, our nation turns its lonely eyes to you...

Thomas Frank has a column in today's Wall Street Journal detailing the horrors at an Iowa meatpacking plant that was subject to the largest immigration bust of all time last May. The conditions sound as if they came out of Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle",

According to the Times, the immigration agents also "found more than 20 under-age workers, some as young as 13." One young worker told investigators "he worked 17-hour shifts, six day a week."

"The investigation brings to light egregious violations of virtually every aspect of Iowa's child labor laws," the Iowa labor commissioner said yesterday.

The Des Moines Register noted in March that "the Iowa Division of Labor Services said it was citing the plant for 39 violations of safety rules." By comparison, according to union officials, "in 2007, Iowa OSHA [Occupational Safety and Health Administration] issued 19 violations for all meatpacking plants" in the state.

The fines levied against AgriProcessors, however, were eventually reduced to $42,750 from $182,000. The same pattern holds true in the case of the only federal Labor Department fines against the company that I have been able to discover, which were levied in 2006, and which set the company back a grand total of $2,250.

In 2006, the Jewish Daily Forward reported on AgriProcessors workers' complaints about low wages -- between $6.25 and $7 an hour -- and about receiving almost no safety training before starting jobs that are, statistically, among the most dangerous of jobs in the work force.

Many of the workers were illegal immigrants so they were not in a position to complain. Their bosses sadistically exploited them and when the Feds came knocking it wasn't to help the workers it was to arrest them.

Men, women and children who had come to this country to seek a better life. Just as your fore-fathers and mine did. They were exploited, worked in neo-slavery conditions and our government turned a blind eye to that exploitation.

It's despicable but entirely predictable, this is what conservatives think of the working class. They are nothing more than chattel to conservatives, to be used up and tossed aside when their usefulness has passed. They are not humans, merely fungible laborers. The only power that the working class has is the power of organization, which of course the Bush administration and conservatives have consistently worked to attack and undermine. Frank notes,

History records that Paul Weyrich, one of the founders of the Moral Majority, the Heritage Foundation and other conservative groups, used to present himself as a soul-brother to the American worker. In his heyday he railed against the "elitist upper class" and established his bona fides by saying, "I come from a poor district of working-class people."

Writing in the Washington Times last week, Mr. Weyrich was back in his old rhetorical neighborhood. The subject was Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, and Mr. Weyrich was writing to celebrate "the best record of accomplishment of anyone in the Bush administration." Read closely, and you get the impression that Ms. Chao's the best secretary of Labor ever. After all, as Mr. Weyrich notes, she has applied stricter regulations to labor unions and has held the line against card-check unionization, which would allow workers to organize a union by signing cards instead of casting ballots.

This is what is at stake this fall for American workers in Colorado and across the nation. In Colorado we are seeing a"Work for Less" ballot initiative being pushed by the notoriously anti-worker Coors family. Amednment 47 would further damage labor unions in Colorado by forcing them to bargain for and represent workers who contribute not a penny to cover those costs. Amendment 47 is not about choice or protecting workers, it is about undercutting the financial legs of labor unions and giving big business and men like the Coors family a tighter grip on their workers. If you can't organize you can't fight back.

Nationally the election of Barack Obama and an expansion of Democratic majorities in the House and Senate will help ensure passage of the Employee Free Choice Act. The Act would allow workers to organize their workplace without giving their employers months (if not years) to harass, fire and even close entire stores in retaliation against workers who are exercising their right to organize.

Employers flagrantly break the law because they know that any punishment, if it comes at all, is years away. Just last week Wal-Mart was fined for an incident that occurred 8 years ago. Justice delayed is justice denied.

This election gives working families a choice - do they want to increase their wages, increase their benefits and increase the safety of their workplaces? Or do they want more of the same - sweatshop conditions, declining wages and a complete lack of any benefits? It's clear what side of the argument conservatives are on. Which side are you on?