U$A

Child Labor and Immigration

Mostly a policy lament.

STEVEN L. TAYLOR · SUNDAY, MARCH 5, 2023 ·

Via WaPo: A cleaning company illegally employed a 13-year-old. Her family is paying the price.

At 13, she was too young to be cleaning a meatpacking plant in the heart of Nebraska cattle country, working the graveyard shift amid the brisket saws and the bone cutters. The cleaning company broke the law when it hired her and more than two dozen other teenagers in this gritty industrial town, federal officials said.

[Since the U.S. Department of Labor raided the plant in October, Packers Sanitation Services, a contractor hired to clean the facility, has been fined for violating child labor laws. The girl, meanwhile, has watched her whole life unravel.

First, she lost the job that burned and blistered her skin but paid her $19 an hour. Then a county judge sent her stepfather to jail for driving her to work each night, a violation of state child labor laws. Her mother also faces jail time for securing the fake papers that got the child the job in the first place. And her parents are terrified of being sent back to Guatemala, the country they left several years ago in search of a better life.

I suspect that this case, and others like it, are a bit of a Rorschach Test. Some will see it as a corporation exploiting desperate people, while others will see a family who shouldn’t be in the United States (and who exploited their own child by letting her work).

I will state from the onset that I am more sympathetic to desperate people whose desperation leads them to engage in, well, desperate behavior, but will certainly acknowledge that there are reasons to lay some blame in their direction. Packers paying a fine and the consequences for the family are ultimately not equivalent in my mind.

A sweeping investigation of Packers found 102 teens, ages 13 to 17, scouring slaughterhouses in eight states, part of a growing wave of child workers illegally hired to fill jobs in some of the nation’s most dangerous industries. Driven in part by persistent labor shortages and record numbers of unaccompanied migrant minors arriving from Central America, child labor violations have nearly quadrupled since 2015, according to Labor Department data, spiking in hazardous jobs that American citizens typically shun.

[…]

Packers has faced no criminal charges, despite evidence that it failed to take basic steps to verify the age of its young employees. Last month, it quickly resolved the case by paying a $1.5 million civil fine. The families of the teen workers, by contrast, have been exposed to child-abuse charges and potential deportation. None have applied for work permits and the protection against deportation that is available to the child workers, fearing retaliation in a company town where almost everyone’s job is somehow tied to the meatpacking industry.

[…]

Packers officials said they have dismissed all the minor workers and fired two managers in Grand Island. They accused “rogue individuals” of using counterfeit documents to prove that the children were of legal age and emphasized that the 102 workers made up a tiny share of the company’s 17,000-member workforce. The full statement from Packers is available here.

For anyone who has paid attention to this general topic will recognize the broad outlines here. Companies need employees and immigrants need work. Both either break, bend, and/or ignore the law to make the transaction happen. Once someone gets caught the company basically says “whoops” and pays a fine, and the employees (and often their broader communities) tend to suffer very direct consequences.

Let me pause and note that there is no easy solution to any of this. The easiest of them all is “seal the border” (or similar formulations) and it is an utter impossibility. As I have noted on multiple occasions, there are too many legitimate transactions across the border to “seal” it or “close” it in any meaningful fashion. Calls to “seal” the border are just a way of saying “I wish this problem would go away” with all the efficacy such a statement implies.

What I am constantly struck by when I read stories about immigrants and immigration policy are the very real market forces that help drive all of this behavior. There is a market for labor in this country that is not being satisfied and there is a supply of labor south of the border willing to do the work in question. There is also a very real demand for security and opportunity in many people living south of the border (especially in places like Guatemala and El Salvador) and the ample supply of security and opportunity in the United States. Combining these two push-pull circumstances means that US policymakers have some very, very powerful forces to contend with if we are going to find solutions to deal with this situation in any way that actually makes it better.

(I have held this view for decades, in fact).

Instead, we remain in a spiral of nonsensical approaches. We don’t want to really deal with the labor demands (which would include better enforcement of existing labor laws and, quite frankly, things like paying better wages to attract workers, but that would lead to higher prices that no one wants to pay). We don’t want to figure out a better way to allow labor to enter the country legally. We don’t want to pay to increase the bureaucracy needed to deal with migrants.

We really don’t want to do anything.

And I realize that at the base of my assumptions about this situation is that migrants are going to come and we need to figure out how to deal with that fact. This automatically makes the “seal the border” faction of the population want to ignore me as being an “open border” type. But the issue to me is simple: the empirical reality is that migrants are going to come. If the US really is the land of opportunity, the land of the free and the home of the brave, as well as a shining city on a hill, people are going to come. Desperation is a major motivator. Indeed, it seems to me that the desire for self-improvement, broadly defined, is a major motivator for a lot of humanity and human history shows that people will endure much to improve the lives of their children.

While I have no easy solution (and if an easy solution was possible in a Sunday morning blog post, well, the problem wouldn’t be inspiring blog posts), I will say this: if we had a flooding problem you solve that problem through the construction of dams, levies, dikes, canals, and the like to control the flow. Such systems do not guarantee universal fixes, but it allows for control of the flow of water, to help stop catastrophic flooding and to help direct the water where needed. You don’t just send out the bucket brigade while complaining that we need to “seal” the horizon.

I suspect that if we had a more rational process to deal with migrants, it would be possible to better control the flow (but it would never stop the illegal crossings).

Instead, we refuse to really do anything.

THE REPUBLICAN CHILD LABOR AGENDA

 BY ERIK LOOMIS

 

/

 

ON MARCH 5, 2023

 

/

 

As Timothy Noah notes, the rise of child labor in America is directly connected to Republican policies on the issue, as in Republicans are objectively pro-child labor.

Child labor is back. The Labor Department’s wage and hour division recorded a 37 percent increase in 2022 in the number of minors employed in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act, which outlawed most child labor way back in 1938 and imposed strict limits on the rest. The 37 percent increase was over the previous year. Over the previous decade, the number of minors employed in violation of the act was up 140 percent. 

The surge in child labor reverses what had been, for most of the past 20 years, a significant decline in the number of minors employed in violation of the FLSA. Nobody knows exactly why the numbers started to climb in 2015, but probably it was because the labor market was getting tight. The unemployment rate, which had been falling since 2010, dropped in 2015 to 5 percent, which was then considered full employment. Workers were getting hard to find. The unemployment rate has since fallen further to 3.4 percent. 

The violations began piling up just as Republican state legislators, many of them newly in the majority, went on the attack against child labor restrictions, pressing in various ways to expand the number of work hours and work settings available to teenagers aged 14 to 17. (With exceptions for farm families, child actors, and a few others, child labor under age 14 is illegal.) One Wisconsin bill went so far as to ban the phrase “child labor” from state employment statutes, requiring that the offending term be replaced by “employment of minors.” A bill introduced in Iowa last month would allow 14-year-olds to work in meatpacking plants. If the youngster gets hurt due to his own negligence (whatever that means at 14), the meatpacker will be indemnified against civil liability. 

Only a few of these Dickensian pro-child-labor bills got enacted, but some did. In June, New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu signed into law a bill that allows 14-year-old busboys to clear tables where liquor is served and expands from 30 to 35 the number of hours 16- and 17-year-olds may work during the school year. These restrictions had “become too cumbersome,” New Hampshire Deputy Labor Commissioner Rudolph Ogden explained to The New Hampshire Bulletin. Sununu is weighing a presidential bid in 2024. Working campaign slogan: Bring Back Warren’s Blacking Factory. (Just kidding.)

With this political backdrop, it’s little wonder that an investigation published Saturday by Hannah Dreier of The New York Times revealed a “shadow work force” of migrant children “across industries in every state”: 12-year-old roofers in Florida and Tennessee; 13-year-old girls washing hotel sheets in Virginia; a 13-year-old boy in Michigan making auto parts on an overnight shift that ends at 6:30 a.m.; a 12-year-old working for a Hyundai subsidiary in Alabama (this last courtesy of Reuters). The good news is that the Cheetos you’re snacking on or the Fruit of the Loom socks warming your feet may have been manufactured right here in the United States. The bad news is that they may have been made with child labor. It’s no longer just a Third World practice, or a bad memory from How the Other Half Lives.

Covid-19, Big Ag and the Failing Food System

by RASHID NURI MAY 18, 2020 COUNTERPUNCH

Photograph Source: Cullen328 – CC BY-SA 3.0

Big Ag has separated humankind from the process of creating food that sustains existence. This separation has been done for material gain. Big Ag has interrupted the most natural relationship, a spiritual relationship, between humanity and the land. This human/land connection supersedes all religions. It is humankind’s association with land that feeds us and fortifies people to grow and expand civilization. It is this divine relationship that has been interrupted by the economic agenda of Big Ag. That agenda, like in most industry, is to monetize human need, with little or no concern for people’s wellbeing.

This COVID-19 pandemic has heightened the contradictions existing in our food system. We have a hyper-concentration in the distribution of food throughout the country. There is grand irony in hearing one of the leaders of Big Ag express dismay at the current state of affairs.

John Tyson is a third-generation scion and board chairman of the family business that bears his name. Tyson Foods, headquartered in Springdale Arkansas, is the world’s second largest processor and marketer of chicken, beef, and pork. Tyson exports the largest percentage of beef out of the United States. Their revenues exceed $40 billion annually.

“The food supply chain is breaking,” wrote board chairman John Tyson in a full-page advertisement published simultaneously in The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. “There will be limited supply of our products available in grocery stores until we are able to reopen our facilities that are currently closed,” Tyson wrote.

President Donald Trump issued an Executive Order that invoked the Defense Production Act and commanded meat processing facilities to remain open. An analysis by Business Insider found at least 4,585 Tyson workers in 15 states have been diagnosed with COVID-19, and 18 have died. Trump’s order has prioritized meatpacker profits over the health and safety of workers, many of whom are immigrants, and created coronavirus hotspots.

The food system is broken! Where are the solutions? We need a comprehensive Small Farm and Urban Agriculture Homestead Act to support local food economies!! Some tentative steps have been taken. We have to go further.

Senator Cory Booker, joined by Senator Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Ro Khanna, has introduced a bill to phase out large-scale factory farming by 2040. The question is what will replace the current modalities of production? Access to land, labor, capital (both infrastructure and funding) and regulatory support has to shift from Big Ag to small farmers who live in the neighborhoods that they serve. There are billions of dollars already committed to the food system in the form of subsidies, education and research and other resources, that can fund a new food system that is more efficient, healthy and humane.

As it stands, the business of farming and ranching is increasingly concentrated, with few growers occupying much larger acreage. The number of farms in the U.S. peaked in 1935, at 6.8 million.  By 2016, there were only 2.1 million farms, occupying the same number of acres.  Large farms “eat up” smaller ones, by having greater access to land, equipment and markets. The small farmers that have weathered the onslaught of commercial farming are finding it difficult to survive.  According to a 2016 USDA report, 59 to 78 percent of small farms, those with gross incomes up to $349,999, were operating in the red in 2015.  On the other hand, farms with incomes of $1-5 million and above were more likely to bring in profits averaging 25%.

Building sustainable communities begins with a focus on infrastructure, equity and food self-sufficiency. Big Ag is highly scalable, but not replicable. They have the ability to become larger, but the possibility of their facilities and infrastructure being replicated are slim. However, the local food production provided by small farms and urban agriculture is highly replicable. Small farms and urban agriculture can address many of the issues faced by humanity and expand a very productive pre-industrial, regenerative local food economy.

More articles by:RASHID NURI

Rashid Nuri is the author of Growing Out Loud.

REWARDING MEAT INDUSTRY THAT KILLED ITS WORKERS DURING COVID

US pledges $500 million to boost meat processing capacity

12 July 2021

The US government will invest at least $500 million to expand beef, pork and poultry processing capacity, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said on Friday, after consumers faced limits on meat purchases during the COVID-19 pandemic last year.

According to a report from Reuters, the money from a $1.9 trillion pandemic relief package approved in March will be awarded to meat processors in grants and loans to make the supply chain more resilient and increase competition in the sector, Vilsack said at a news conference in Council Bluffs, Iowa.

President Joe Biden signed a sweeping executive order that pushes the US Department of Agriculture to crack down on "abusive practices of some meat processors" and promote more competition in the US economy.

Cattle ranchers say there are too few processing companies that buy livestock to turn into beef, sometimes forcing farmers to accept the one and only bid they receive for animals.

Ranchers are now selling cattle for a loss even though meat companies make profits selling beef to consumers, Vilsack said.

"It seems to me in fairness profit ought to go both ways," he added.

The meatpacking sector came under increased scrutiny after slaughterhouses closed temporarily during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic as workers fell sick.

When large meat plants close, meat supplies tighten while ranchers get stuck with cattle that would otherwise have been slaughtered. That means the price of cattle generally falls, while the price of meat in supermarkets rises.

A cyberattack against the North American arm of Brazilian meatpacker JBS SA that shut US beef plants last month highlighted concerns about concentration in the sector.

Biden's order directs USDA to consider new rules to make it easier for farmers to bring and win legal claims against big processors.

The USDA said in June it would pursue three rules to strengthen enforcement of the Packers and Stockyards Act, passed 100 years ago to protect farmers from unfair trade practices.

The North American Meat Institute, which represents meat companies, said on Friday that Biden's order will "open the floodgates for litigation."

"Government intervention in the market will increase the cost of food for consumers at a time when many are still suffering from the economic consequences of the pandemic," said Meat Institute President Julie Anna Potts.

TheCattleSite News Desk

German labor minister demands meat company pay coronavirus compensation

More than 1,300 people have tested positive at a Tönnies slaughterhouse, causing Germany's transmission rate to rocket. Germany's labor minister says the firm should pay compensation.

German Labor Minister Minister Hubertus Heil demanded the meat processing company behind a massive coronavirus outbreak should pay damages, in comments on Sunday evening.

More than 1,300 people have tested positive for the virus after an outbreak at the Rheda-Wiedenbrück meat processing plant, in the district of Gütersloh near Bielefeld, operated by German meat giant Tönnies.

"There must be a civil liability of the company," Heil told a Bild online broadcast, adding that the company had "taken an entire region hostage" by violating the coronavirus rules.

Heil said that his trust in the Tönnies company was "equal to zero." He said that the company not only endangered its own employees, but also "public health."

Read more: Coronavirus: German slaughterhouse outbreak crosses 1,000

Reproduction rate surges

Regional officials said the virus had largely been contained to the factory's mostly Romanian and Bulgarian workers, but the outbreak has prompted fears of wider community transmission and a return to large scale lockdowns.

The plant's 6,500 workers, who live in cramped company-provided accommodation, have been forced into quarantine. However, authorities have been hampered by poor documentation by the company.

Schools and daycare centers in the area have been ordered to shut and the plant has been closed.

Following the outbreak, Germany's coronavirus all-important reproduction rate surged to 2.88 — almost three times what it needs to be to contain the outbreak. The reproduction rate, or 'R' value, estimates how many people an infected person passes the virus to. Experts say a rate of less than 1 is needed to eliminate the disease.

The 7-day 'r' value, which tends to fluctuate less dramatically, increased from 1.55 on Saturday to 2.03 on Sunday.

Read more: NRW's Laschet walks back 'Romanians and Bulgarians' coronavirus commen

Tönnies blames its workers

Company boss Clemens Tönnies, who initially blamed his Eastern European workers for the outbreak, publicly apologized on Saturday saying he was "fully responsible," but refused to step down.

Green faction leader Anton Hofreiter appealed to the billionaire to cover the costs incurred by the virus outbreak from his own coffers.

If Tönnies meant his apology seriously, "he would pay the costs out of his private assets — not out of the company's assets," Hofreiter told the same show.

Calls for change

Heil told the broadcast: "The exploitation of people from Central and Eastern Europe, which has obviously taken place there, is now becoming a general health risk in the pandemic with considerable damage." Therefore, "there has to be a fundamental change in this industry."

Heil's colleague and SPD leader Norbert Walter-Borjans called for higher meat prices and a debate on distributive justice in Germany.

"Meat is a product that is produced with a high input of energy and other raw materials. Its value and price are often in stark disproportion," Walter-Borjans told the Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland newspaper group.

He said the Tönnies case showed "how little attention is paid to the question of how food — our most important basis of life — is produced." Everything is "subordinated to the pursuit of profit and efficiency."

Read more: Germany's meat industry under fire after COVID-19 outbreaks

aw/msh (AFP, dpa, epd)

DW RECOMMENDS

'Employees are not to blame' for coronavirus outbreaks

Labor adviser Elena Strato says meatpacker Tönnies is cynically trying to pin blame for a coronavirus outbreak on foreign workers. She says companies must be forced to sustainably improve dangerous working conditions. (19.06.2020)

Coronavirus: Over 600 people test positive at German slaughterhouse

Yet another German slaughterhouse has registered a massive outbreak of the coronavirus. Roughly two-thirds of the test results so far have come back positive. (17.06.2020)

How does Germany's meat industry work?

Germany's meat industry is a valuable part of its economy, but it is being heavily criticized following multiple coronavirus outbreaks. DW looks at the money big companies make, and conditions for workers. (19.06.2020)

BLACK FARMERS CHEATED, AGAIN

U$ Federal government has given $800 million to keep indebted farmers afloat

Jared Strong, Iowa Capital Dispatch
October 19, 2022

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack. (Jared Strong / Iowa Capital Dispatch)

More than 13,000 farmers have benefited from nearly $800 million in federal debt relief, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said Tuesday.

The assistance came from a new federal initiative to erase farmers’ loan delinquencies to the U.S. Department of Agriculture and private lenders or to resolve their remaining debts after foreclosure.

Going forward, the USDA is expected to give hundreds of millions of dollars of relief to farmers who are facing bankruptcy or foreclosure and to those who are at risk of missing payments on their loans.

“The star of the show here is the farmer,” Vilsack told reporters. “The person that really matters is the farmer, and keeping that farmer, him or her, on the land so that he or she can take care of their family and their community.”

The USDA’s Farm Service Agency gives direct loans to farmers and guarantees loans from banks, credit unions and others to farmers for up to 95% of their value.

The government’s farm loan obligations for the 2022 fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30, totaled about $5.8 billion, according to USDA records. States with the highest obligations included Iowa at about $484 million, Arkansas at $424 million, Oklahoma at $366 million and Nebraska at $341 million. Virginia’s overall obligations totaled over $67.5 million.

Of those with delinquent direct loans, the average farmer who has failed to make regular payments for at least two months received about $52,000 under a “distressed borrowers” initiative, which is funded with more than $3 billion by the Inflation Reduction Act. That eliminated their delinquencies.

For those with government-backed loans from private entities, the average benefit was about $172,000.

The total number of farmers in the two categories was about 11,000.

For those with direct loans who went bankrupt and still owed money — about 2,100 borrowers — the average benefit was about $101,000. Vilsack said those bankruptcies happened at least a year ago but did not say how long ago they might have occurred.

States with farmers who received the most relief included Oklahoma and Texas, Vilsack said, whereas farmers in the northeastern states of Connecticut, Delaware and Rhode Island were among those who received the least. Those northeastern states had a combined total of federal farm loan obligations of just $11 million during the 2022 fiscal year, USDA records show.

“Virtually every state in the country has a borrower or several borrowers or groups of borrowers that are impacted by this,” Vilsack said. “I think you’re probably talking about some very, very small operators, and you’re probably talking about a few that would be considered to be mid- or large-sized operators. So it’s across the board.”

The debt relief initiative is the subject of a new lawsuit by non-white farmers who claim that the government improperly reneged on its plans to forgive loan debts of “socially disadvantaged” farmers, which was part of the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. That initial version of the plan was challenged by lawsuits that claimed it was discriminatory.

The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 amended the debt relief program to eliminate its prescribed goal to help Asian, Black, Hispanic and Native American farmers. Vilsack described the farmers who have been aided by the amended initiative as those who “couldn’t get credit anywhere else.”

On Sept. 21, Virginia Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Newport News, sent a letter to Vilsack urging the federal government “to provide swift and equitable relief for borrowers with at-risk agricultural operations” and “take immediate action to ensure that producers with farm loans guaranteed by the USDA are protected from foreclosure.”

The letter was signed by 11 other members of Congress including Virginia Rep. Donald McEachin, D-Richmond.

The USDA suspended its foreclosures of direct loans in January 2021 because of the coronavirus pandemic, which was especially tough on livestock producers. Meatpacker closures because of the virus abruptly choked demand for the animals and led in some cases to mass euthanasia. The supply costs for farmers have also soared, notably for fertilizers.

This story originally appeared in the Iowa Capital Dispatch, a sister publication of The Virginia Mercury within the States Newsroom network


Virginia Mercury is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Virginia Mercury maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sarah Vogelsong for questions: info@virginiamercury.com. Follow Virginia Mercury on Facebook and Twitter.

POST COVID-19 ROBOTS ARE COMING FOR TYSON JOBS

Tyson Foods names new CEO as coronavirus raises costs

Banks, a former executive at Google-parent Alphabet Inc’s (GOOGL.O) experimental research division, will help the company integrate more technology into operations

(Reuters) - Tyson Foods Inc (TSN.N) named its president, Dean Banks, as its new chief executive on Monday as the meatpacker faces unprecedented disruptions from the COVID-19 outbreak.

FILE PHOTO: Tyson Foods brand frozen chicken wings are pictured in a grocery store freezer in the Manhattan borough of New York City, U.S. May 11, 2017. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri/File Photo

Tyson said Banks will replace 37-year company veteran Noel White in October as it reported lower-than-expected quarterly sales. The company predicted the pandemic will increase operating costs and hinder sales volumes into next year.

Uncertainty over the reopening of the economy confronts Banks, who joined Tyson’s board in 2017 and became president in December 2019.

Tyson Foods wants China to lift ban on U.S. plant with COVID-19 cases

Chairman John Tyson said Banks, a former executive at Google-parent Alphabet Inc’s (GOOGL.O) experimental research division, will help the company integrate more technology into operations and focus on employee health.

The novel coronavirus has infected thousands of U.S. meatpacking workers and led to temporary meat shortages as processors like Tyson, JBS (JBSS3.SA) and Smithfield Foods [SFII.UL] closed slaughterhouses in April and May. Plants have reopened, but absences among workers who are afraid of getting sick continue to limit output.
Tyson said it faces reduced demand from restaurants and food-service outlets that has not been offset by stronger meat sales at grocers. The company predicted its chicken and prepared foods segments will suffer lower sales volumes in the last fiscal quarter.


In the third quarter ended June 27, Tyson’s chicken unit reported an adjusted operating loss of $120 million, compared with income of $237 million a year earlier.

“Our level of future growth is dependent on away-from-home eating occasions, which will be impacted by communities opening up and potentially reclosing,” White told analysts on a call.

JP Morgan said it expected the leadership change, although it may spook some investors. Shares were up about 1%.

Tyson’s quarterly sales fell to $10.02 billion from $10.89 billion. Analysts expected revenue of $10.56 billion, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.


Excluding items, Tyson earned $1.40 per share, beating analysts’ estimates for 94 cents.

Tyson said direct costs related to COVID-19 were about $340 million, including employee testing and personal protective equipment.


Reporting by Uday Sampath in Bengaluru and Tom Polansek in Chicago; Editing by Marguerita Choy and Steve Orlofsky

Russia-based hackers breach more than 1,000 businesses

Erin Doherty, Jacob Knutson, Gigi Sukin


Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios

A Russia-based hacking group known as REvil has compromised the computer systems of at least 1,000 businesses by targeting managed service providers, according to to the cybersecurity firm Huntress Labs Inc.

Why it matters: It's a large-scale ransomware campaign — the full scope of which is not yet known — and comes on the heels of several other high-profile ransomware attacks this year.

Of note via Bloomberg: "Such attacks can have a multiplying effect, since the hackers may then gain access and infiltrate the MSPs’ customers too."
The affected MSPs, platforms that provide IT management and other core network functions for businesses, and companies have not yet been named.

The latest: President Biden said Saturday that the U.S. government is still not certain who is behind the hack, according to Reuters.
"The initial thinking was it was not the Russian government but we're not sure yet," Biden said. Biden said he directed U.S. intelligences agencies to investigate.
Victims have emerged in 11 countries so far, per cybersecurity firm ESET.
Grocery chain Coop’s 800+ stores in Sweden couldn’t open Saturday after the hack led cash registers to malfunction, spokesperson Therese Knapp told Bloomberg.

What they're saying: John Hammond, a cybersecurity researcher at Huntress Labs, said more than 20 MSPs have been impacted. He noted the criminals targeted software supplier Kaseya, using its network-management package to spread the ransomware.
“What makes this attack stand out is the trickle-down effect, from the managed service provider to the small business,” Hammond said. “Kaseya handles large enterprise all the way to small businesses globally, so ultimately, it has the potential to spread to any size or scale business.”

Cybersecurity researcher Jake Williams, president of Rendition Infosec, told AP it's no accident that this happened before a holiday weekend, when IT staffing is generally thin.
Hackers frequently infiltrate widely used software, then spread malware as the software automatically updates.

The privately held Kaseya is based in Dublin, with a U.S. headquarters in Miami. The Miami Herald reported Kaseya's plans to hire as many as 500 workers by 2022 to staff a recently acquired cybersecurity platform.

The big picture: The breach comes after a summit between President Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin, during which Biden threatened to use the U.S.' "significant" cyber capabilities to respond if critical infrastructure entities are targeted by Russian hackers.
FBI Director Christopher Wray told Congress in June that cyber threats against U.S. businesses are increasing "almost exponentially."

Go deeper: FBI: Russia-linked REvil behind ransomware attack on meatpacker JBS

Editor's note: This story will be updated as new information is released.

Cyber attack on US businesses through Kaseya software to be investigated for Russia links

Mr Biden has ordered an investigation into the cyber attack.(Reuters: Carlos Barria)


A cyber attack that immobilised US businesses ahead of the nation's July 4 holiday weekend will be investigated for links to Russia.

Key points:

US President Joe Biden says authorities are "not sure" whether Russia is behind the attack

Scores of businesses were affected by the attack, but estimates of how many vary

Cyber security experts say the attack is one of the largest of its kind

Security firm Huntress Labs suspects the so-called supply chain attack was carried out by a Russian gang called REvil, which has also been blamed for last month's attack on global meat packer JBS.

US President Joe Biden said authorities were "not certain" who was behind the attack, which experts say is one of the largest of its kind.

"The initial thinking was it was not the Russian government but we're not sure yet," he said.

Mr Biden said he had directed US intelligence agencies to investigate, and the United States would respond if it determined Russia was to blame.

Cybersecurity was a topic of discussion when Mr Biden met

 Russian leader Vladimir Putin last month.(AP: Patrick Semansky)

The hackers who struck on Friday US time hijacked widely used technology management software from a supplier called Kaseya.

They changed a Kaseya tool used by companies that manage technology at smaller businesses. They then encrypted the files of those providers' customers.

Kaseya said on its own website on Friday that it was investigating a "potential attack".

It also said it had limited the attack to "a very small percentage of our customers … currently estimated at fewer than 40 worldwide".

But Huntress Labs said it was working with partners targeted in the attack, and the software was manipulated "to encrypt more than 1,000 companies".

"This is a colossal and devastating supply-chain attack," John Hammond from Huntress said.

Gerome Billois, a cybersecurity expert with Wavestone consultancy, said ransomware attacks typically only affected one business at a time.

"In this case, they attacked a company that provides software for managing data systems, allowing them to simultaneously target several dozen — possibly even hundreds — of companies," he said.

Supply chain attacks have crept to the top of the cybersecurity agenda in the wake of the United States accusing hackers of operating at the Russian government's direction and tampering with a network-monitoring tool built by Texas software firm SolarWinds.

While the attack appeared directed at the US, Swedish supermarket chain Coop revealed it had to close more than half of its stores due to outages linked to the attack.

The company said it lost control of its checkouts after a subcontractor was hacked.

ABC/wires

IT management biz Kaseya pwned by miscreants to infect businesses with ransomware

Plus: Cops seize 3D printers 'used to print guns', and more bits and bytes

Iain Thomson in San Francisco

Sat 3 Jul 2021 

IN BRIEF In what's looking like a nasty supply-chain attack, IT systems management biz Kaseya was compromised by miscreants, which then used its VSA product to infect its own customers and then their customers with ransomware.

At least 200 businesses were hit, according to infosec biz Huntress. Kaseya meanwhile initially estimated 40 worldwide were infected. It also told its clients to switch off their VSA data management and remote monitoring services immediately.

"We are experiencing a potential attack against the VSA that has been limited to a small number of on-premise customers only as of 1400 EDT today," it said in a Friday advisory.

"We are in the process of investigating the root cause of the incident with an abundance of caution but we recommend that you IMMEDIATELY shutdown your VSA server until you receive further notice from us. Its (sic) critical that you do this immediately, because one of the first things the attacker does is shut off administrative access to the VSA."

It appears that attackers got onto Kaseya's servers and included a copy of the REvil ransomware in a software update for customers that went out on Friday. It has also taken offline its software-as-a-service platform as a precaution.

"We have been advised by our outside experts that customers who experienced ransomware and receive a communication from the attackers should not click on any links – they may be weaponized," Kaseya's advisory added.

The Florida-based company told The Register it was working with the FBI. It's reported that among the victims is Sweden's grocery store chain Coop, a customer of one of Kaseya's customers, causing 500 stores to remain closed.
The Linkedin breach that wasn't

Earlier this week there were some reports that someone had put 700 million Linkedin records up for sale on the dark web. Rather than intrusion, LinkedIn said, someone who had scraped publicly available information, combined it with other available data, and was trying to make a buck or ten out of it.

"We want to be clear that this is not a data breach and no private LinkedIn member data was exposed," Linkedin said. "Our initial investigation has found that this data was scraped from LinkedIn and other various websites and includes the same data reported earlier this year in our April 2021 scraping update."

Scraping is a serious problem for Linkedin, one it has taken to the US Supreme Court over.
Western Digital devices caught in crossfire?

Last week, users of Western Digital's My Book Live found they had lost a lot of data after devices were remotely wiped via a security vulnerability.

At the time, the manufacturer said this was due to a malware attack. Having looked at the IP addresses and network traffic involved, security shop Censys suggested it looked likely that one criminal infected My Book kit and then a separate individual initiated the factory reset command, suggesting someone could be trying to take out a rival.

Western Digital, however, disagrees. "Our investigation shows that in some cases, the same attacker exploited both vulnerabilities on the device, as evidenced by the source IP," it said. "The first vulnerability was exploited to install a malicious binary on the device, and the second vulnerability was later exploited to reset the device."

In the meantime the firm is offering data recovery services to affected folks and promising My Book Live customers a trade-in service for My Cloud accounts.
Google tidies up Nest security

Google has announced that it's beefing up the security of devices in its smart home biz Nest, and made a five-year commitment to support existing products. This comes after it discontinued its Nest Secure home security system.

The Chocolate Factory said all devices sold since 2019 will adhere to the standards of the Internet of Secure Things Alliance (ioXt) on patching and security. In addition Google will publish the ioXt validation results for all of its kit so buyers can make an informed choice.

"A helpful home is a safe home, and Nest’s new safety center is part of making sure Nest products help take care of the people in your life and the world around you," Google said in a blog post.

US police seize 3D printers over gun charges

An unusual case of physical security came up this week after the Pennsylvania police took custody of two 3D printers that allegedly were used to manufacture parts for so-called ghost guns – unregulated firearms American cops and prosecutors aren't too keen on.

“Kenneth Wilson was caught manufacturing untrackable and untraceable firearms out of his home. Once assembled, these fully functional firearms often become a tool for senseless violence,” said the state's Attorney General Josh Shapiro.

“Ghost guns are quickly becoming the weapon of choice for criminals that take the lives of too many Pennsylvanians. My office is working overtime to target these gun traffickers and get illegal guns off our streets.”

In addition to the 3D printers, police also said they seized three ghost gun frames, three firearms, a small amount of methamphetamine, $1,140 in cash, and drug packaging equipment from the suspect's house. ®

Sponsored: The Register 2021 Reader Study - We want what you know!

REvil ransomware hits 1,000+ companies in MSP supply-chain attack

By Lawrence Abrams
July 2, 2021

A massive REvil ransomware attack affects multiple managed service providers and over a thousand of their customers through a reported Kaseya supply-chain attack.

Starting this afternoon, the REvil ransomware gang, aka Sodinokibi, targeted MSPs with thousands of customers, through what appears to be a Kaseya VSA supply-chain attack.

At this time, there eight known large MSPs that have been hit as part of this supply-chain attack.

READ MOREThe Week in Ransomware ‑ July 2nd 2021 ‑MSPs under attack

Kaseya VSA is a cloud-based MSP platform that allows providers to perform patch management and client monitoring for their customers.

Huntress Labs' John Hammond has told BleepingComputer that all of the affected MSPs are using Kaseya VSA and that they have proof that their customers are being encrypted as well.


"We are tracking 20 MSPs where Kaseya VSA was used to encrypt over 1,000 business and are working in close collaboration with six of them," Hammond shared in blog post about the attack.

Kaseya issued a security advisory on their help desk site, warning all VSA customers to immediately shut down their VSA server to prevent the attack's spread while investigating.


"We are experiencing a potential attack against the VSA that has been limited to a small number of on-premise customers only as of 2:00 PM EDT today.

We are in the process of investigating the root cause of the incident with an abundance of caution but we recommend that you IMMEDIATELY shutdown your VSA server until you receive further notice from us.

Its critical that you do this immediately, because one of the first things the attacker does is shutoff administrative access to the VSA."

In a statement to BleepingComputer, Kaseya stated that they have shut down their SaaS servers and are working with other security firms to investigate the incident.

Most large-scale ransomware attacks are conducted late at night over the weekend when there is less staff to monitor the network.

As this attack happened midday on a Friday, the threat actors likely planned the time to coincide with the July 4th weekend in the USA, where it is common for staff to have a shorter workday before the holidays.

If you have first-hand information about this attack or information about affected companies, we would love to hear about it. You can confidentially contact us on Signal at +16469613731 or on Wire at @lawrenceabrams-bc.
REvil attack spread through auto-update


BleepingComputer has been told by both Huntress' John Hammond and Sophos' Mark Loman that the attacks on MSPs appear to be a supply chain attack through Kaseya VSA.

According to Hammond, Kaseya VSA will drop an agent.crt file to the c:\kworking folder, which is being distributed as an update called 'Kaseya VSA Agent Hot-fix.'

A PowerShell command is then launched that first disables various Microsoft Defender security features, such as real-time monitoring, Controlled Folder Access, script scanning, and network protection.

It will then decode the agent.crt file using the legitimate Windows certutil.exe command to extract an agent.exe file to the same folder, which is then launched to begin the encryption process.

PowerShell command to execute the REvil ransomware
Source: Reddit

The agent.exe is signed using a certificate from "PB03 TRANSPORT LTD" and includes an embedded 'MsMpEng.exe' and 'mpsvc.dll,' with the DLL being the REvil encryptor. When extracted, the 'MsMpEng.exe' and 'mpsvc.dll' are placed in the C:\Windows folder.

Signed agent.exe file

The MsMPEng.exe is an older version of the legitimate Microsoft Defender executable used as a LOLBin to launch the DLL and encrypt the device through a trusted executable.

The agent.exe extracting and launching embedded resources

Some of the samples add politically charged Windows Registry keys and configurations changes to infected computers.

For example, a sample [VirusTotal] installed by BleepingComputer adds the HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\BlackLivesMatter key to store configuration information from the attack.

Advanced Intel's Vitali Kremez told BleepingComputer that another sample configures the device to launch REvil Safe Mode with a default password of 'DTrump4ever.'

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon]
"AutoAdminLogon"="1"
"DefaultUserName"="[account_name]"
"DefaultPassword"="DTrump4ever"

Kaseya CEO Fred Voccola told BleepingComputer in an email late Friday night that a vulnerability in Kaseya VSA was used during the attack and that a patch will be released as soon as possibly.

"While our investigation is ongoing, to date we believe that:

Our SaaS customers were never at-risk. We expect to restore service to those customers once we have confirmed that they are not at risk, which we expect will be within the next 24 hours;

Only a very small percentage of our customers were affected – currently estimated at fewer than 40 worldwide.

We believe that we have identified the source of the vulnerability and are preparing a patch to mitigate it for our on-premises customers that will be tested thoroughly. We will release that patch as quickly as possible to get our customers back up and running." - Kaseya.

BleepingComputer has sent followup questions regarding the vulnerability and was told a comprehensive update would be released Saturday afternoon.

Huntress continues to provide more info about the attack in a Reddit thread and we have added IOCs to the bottom of this article.
Ransomware gang demands a $5 million ransom

A sample of the REvil ransomware used in one of these attacks has been shared with BleepingComputer. However, it is unknown if this is the sample used for every victim or if each MSP received its own ransom demand.

The ransomware gang is demanding a $5,000,000 ransom to receive a decryptor from one of the samples.

Ransom demand

According to Emsisoft CTO Fabian Wosar, MSP customers who were affected by the attack received a much smaller $44,999 ransom demand.

While REvil is known to steal data before deploying the ransomware and encrypting devices, it is unknown if the attackers exfiltrated any files.

MSPs are a high-value target for ransomware gangs as they offer an easy channel to infecting many companies through a single breach, yet the attacks require intimate knowledge about MSPs and the software they use.

REvil has an affiliate well versed in the technology used by MSPs as they have a long history of targeting these companies and the software commonly used by them.

In June 2019, an REvil affiliate targeted MSPs via Remote Desktop and then used their management software to push ransomware installers to all of the endpoints that they manage.

This affiliate is believed to have previously worked with GandCrab, who also successfully conducted attacks against MSPs in January 2019.

This is a developing story and will continue to be updated.

Update 7/1/21 10:30 PM EST: Added updated statement about vulnerability.
Update 7/3/21 5:37 PM EST: Updated title and added information on how over 1,000 businesses have been affected this attack.

A Salute to All the Workers Who’ve Kept Us Going

They feed us, rescue us, lend a needed touch. They make our lives possible. A photo essay.

Joshua Berson Today | TheTyee.ca

Joshua Berson is a Vancouver-based photographer who partners with a range of clients who share values of social justice, equality and diversity. These include progressive political parties, unions, women’s groups, environmental organizations, and international and community-based non-profits.

Megan Lawrence is an ambulance paramedic in Vancouver. All photos by Joshua Berson.


During this pandemic, people crucial to the core functioning of our society masked-up, sanitized and risked their family’s health to do their jobs. Today The Tyee salutes all the workers who’ve kept us going.

I’ve had a front-row seat, as a photographer who often chronicles union members at their work sites. Presented here are some pictures of the everyday heroes I’ve met, people like barber Guy Quesnel. His grandfather, father and uncle were all barbers. Guy took over the business in 1995 and it’s provided him a solid livelihood and many warm relationships with his customers.

Then, in the early part of the pandemic, all personal service establishments, including barbers, were closed. “I assumed it would only last a couple of weeks,” Guy told me. “Maybe a month.” He thought that it might make for some time off. But as he learned, “It was no holiday!” Until restrictions were lifted, the shop was shut for ten weeks.

Customers who’ve returned to sit for a haircut and bask in the memorabilia of the Vancouver Canucks and the New Westminster Salmonbellies that cover the walls of Elk’s Barber Shop may not be aware that this is now B.C.’s only unionized barbershop. Guy Quesnel has been a member of UFCW Local 1518 for 30 years.

F

rom top: Guy Quesnel is a third-generation barber in New Westminster. Home health-care workers like this one in Prince George forged on despite risks posed by COVID-19. Photos by Joshua Berson.

Labour Day — or International Workers’ Day as it is known as in most countries — is a time for unions to celebrate the achievements of the labour movement. The eight-hour workday, weekends, health and safety rights, gay and trans rights, collective bargaining rights, women’s rights, pensions, benefits… it’s a long and growing list. Unions, which have long served to reduce inequality and create pathways out of poverty, during COVID times have been called upon to support their members in new and crucial ways.

And yet, despite the increasing rates of unionization during the pandemic, and despite a more worker-friendly NDP provincial government, the majority of workers do not have the protection of a union.

From top: Assisting a resident at a single residency occupancy building in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Delivering crew and supplies to container ships in the Port of Vancouver. Disinfecting showers in a Courtenay community centre. 

Photos by Joshua Berson.

Organizing the unorganized is still a major priority for the union movement. As the great Canadian labour activist and politician J.S. Woodsworth famously said in rallying the movement, “What we desire for ourselves, we wish for all.” This rings especially true now as COVID exposes inequities. During this crisis, unionized workers have enjoyed a level of protection and security only dreamed of by their unorganized (non-union) siblings.

“Most of our 700,000 members have solid contract language that has protected their jobs during the pandemic” says Mark Hancock, national president of Canadian Union of Public Employees

.

From top: HEU members at Vancouver General Hospital celebrate winning their 19-year fight to end privatized outsourcing of housekeeping and dietary workers. Members of Unite Here Local 40 protest at Hilton Vancouver Metrotown, where 97 were fired, the rest locked out. ‘The hotel was always like a family to me, so I didn’t see this coming,’ said Sophea Kong, a banquet server let go after 13 years. Photos by Joshua Berson.

Good news: The provincial government is reversing an injustice done by the B.C. Liberal government in 2002 when it tore up contracts with public health workers, driving down their pay by laying off many and forcing them to be rehired into out-sourced jobs. Health Minister Adrian Dix recently announced that some 4,000 such workers with be brought back in-house as public sector employees. Most are women, many are workers of colour. Today, they earn less than they did during the SARS epidemic 18 years ago. “This is a significant act of solidarity with a group of workers who’ve been pushed to the margins by two decades of privatization,” said HEU secretary-business manager Meena Brisard.

Bad news: Hilton Vancouver Metrotown fired 97 Unite Here Local 40 members and locked out the rest. “Women who clean rooms and serve guests are the backbone of the hotel industry. Hotel workers deserve the right to get their jobs back when business returns. Hilton Metrotown is proving itself to be on the wrong side of history,” said Burnaby Mayor Mike Hurley.

In Castlegar, members of the building trades exit an access shaft at the Hugh Keenleyside Dam that spans the Columbia River. Photo by Joshua Berson.

Today, although we celebrate the achievements of the labour movement, we also recognize that each gain has come at a huge cost and with an even larger struggle.

The ongoing push includes insuring support for workers when health measures close operations, or making sure the transition to work at home is fair and just. “The impact of the pandemic was felt across our entire union,” said David Black, president MoveUP, a union with more than 12,000 members at public and private sector companies.

From top: Kyle McNeil, a supervisor at ICBC, has been working from home for most of the pandemic. Tamara Derby drives a forklift at the ICBC Central Estimating Facility in Coquitlam. Canada Line’s Stephen Rayson is among the many workers who have kept transit running during the pandemic. Photos by Joshua Berson.

“Many of our members, sadly, saw their industries shut down for prolonged periods of time. Those who were fortunate to work in essential services had to shift from their familiar work environment to a very new reality, whether that meant new guidelines in the office or to a work-from-home setup,” Back continued.

“Our union worked closely with our members and their employers to accommodate and ensure that workers felt safe in their new environments and could continue to do the work they are passionate about and provide critical services the public relies upon. Our members deserve a lot of credit for how quickly they managed to adjust to their new environments, keeping themselves and those around them safe.”

From top: A meatpacker in Richmond. Surrey hospital workers stand ready to admit COVID-19 patients at the outset of the pandemic. Photos by Joshua Berson.

But of course, many workers stayed at their posts, their efforts deemed essential to keep society from grinding to a halt.

“Collecting garbage, keeping the water running, staffing hospitals, sanitizing schools and driving buses. CUPE members have shown up every day of this pandemic,” said Hancock of the Canadian Union of Public Employees.

“We have played an outsized role during the COVID crisis in keeping our communities healthy, clean and safe. I could not be more proud of our members.”

From top: Construction was halted early in the pandemic. When it resumed, this ironworker at Olympic Village helped get projects moving again. Among the legion of retail workers who’ve shared smiles and service in anxious times is this meat shop employee on Vancouver’s Granville Island. Her name is Grace. Photos by Joshua Berson.

As the virus has upped anxieties and many resist even basic public health measures such as wearing a mask, frontline workers often bear the brunt. As UFCW 1518 president Kim Novak said in an accompanying Tyee interview today, union members doing their jobs “not only dealt with an increased risk of COVID exposure, they dealt with angry customers, anti-maskers and now anti-vaxxers. They never signed up for that, and it’s completely unacceptable that they should have to deal with that kind of behaviour.”



‘Hope, Pray and Keep Clean’: Driving Taxis in a Pandemic

READ MORE

“Workers are getting B.C. through the pandemic, we’re driving the recovery — and a lot of us have paid a heavy price along the way,” said Sussanne Skidmore, secretary-treasurer of the BC Federation of Labour, an umbrella organization for 500,000 unionized workers in the province. “But where we’ve had unions, workers have been safer, better paid and better able to weather the storm. No wonder there’s such a surge in organizing. We’re stronger when we stand together.”

Looking to join a union? Here is a good starting place.

Joshua Berson is a member of UFCW 1518 and Unifor 780G. In a past life, he was an HEU member working at the VGH laundry.