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Farmers protesting about the pittance they're being paid for high quality meat by beef plants, workers getting sick at frightening rates at those same plants, rumours of tenement housing and exploitation of vulnerable immigrant workers. What would you say is going on here?
I think we in Ireland imagine that hyperexploitation, the real naked blade of capitalism, is something that happens somewhere else. In reality it just happens to someone else, carefully hidden away behind glossy images of green fields and comic Aldi ads about saving on your shop
The profit motive will drive any competent capital owner in a competitive and intensive industry like meat production to do everything legal, and any illegal thing that won't be adequately punished. It's what shareholders demand, it's what the market demands
We rarely hear about the people exploited because they have essentially no elected representation and more importantly little power. Precarity, visa status, insecure housing, lack of access to income supports, these are both reasons to keep quiet and weapons used against them
