Patrick McIlheran thinks that Swift & Co.'s management didn't know a thing.
George Gillett auditions for Casablanca...
The company’s catching it from all sides: Conservative commentators at Free Republic talk of a boycott of Swift because “I’ve had ENOUGH of companies playing the ‘We didn’t know’ BS.” Left-wing commentators at TPMmuckracker write, “the real problem is that the company ... was allowed to stay in business. So long as we are just arresting and deporting the workers, but winking at the businesses that pay cut-rate wages to maximize profits, the problem will continue.”
And former Swift employees are suing, saying the company knew it was hiring illegal immigrants as a means of keeping down wages.
We were dissed by oversight.
Swift may well have joined the Feds' screening program. We are not impressed. What P-Mac wants us to believe is simply unbelievable--that nobody in management noticed the change in composition of their workforce.
Many interesting details may emerge in the future. One which has not yet been addressed in connection with Swift is the existence of an IRS "taxpayer-number-matching program." This program matches SSAN numbers for validity, and IRS sends notification of "bad" numbers to the employer(s) in question.
Key facts of this scandal were revealed in an October report from the Inspector General of the Social Security Administration (SSA). The report examines the records of the 100 companies that filed the most W-2 reports from 1997-2001 on which the names and/or Social Security Numbers did not match SSA records and that SSA--even after some investigation--could not credit to a known taxpayer.
SSA consigns these orphaned W-2s to what it calls the Earnings Suspense File (ESF). The "Top 100" worst filers of W-2s that ended up in the ESF, the inspector general discovered, collectively filed more than 2.7 million of these bad W-2s over the five years studied, reporting about $9.6 billion in wages that could not be matched to a worker.
It's interesting that a Colorado-headquartered company is listed as #77 on the SSA's list. That company filed 15,000+ "bad" Social Security numbers...
It may be that this program was the reason for the ICE raid.
In any case, if a business gets thousands of IRS "bad number" notifications, would NO corporate official notice?
Puhhhhleeeez.
Tamar Jacoby reported in the Washington Post,
ReplyDelete"When job applicants started showing up with what the company [Swift] suspected were false papers, it tried inquiring into their backgrounds -- only to be sued for discrimination by the Justice Department.
More of GWB's schizophrenic Administration problems.
ReplyDeleteI don't doubt that DoJ sued Swift. Your cite simply proves that Swift people KNEW what was going on.
GWB is wrong on this issue and his AG should have been reprimanded for this action.
IIRC, the procedure actually starts with EEOC who refers to the DoJ. So EEOC's head should be fired, too. Publicly. Loudly.