On 11/09/2010 3:24 AM, ViLco wrote:
> Il 11/09/2010 05:34, jmcquown ha scritto:
>
>> A restaurant described as Chinese-Japanese (rather odd) called The Jade
>> Garden in Beaufort was shut down last March because not only were all
>> the employees illegal aliens, so was the owner. It was all over the
>> local news. But, surprise! the place was open again a week later. I
>> don't think these sort of actions have much affect on anything, much
>> less on people eating out or on the prices.
>
> That's eactly what happens in Italy when the LEOs discover a sweatshop
> of illegals: a ridiculous fine, and after a week it's all just as
> before. If they catch the same owner again he gets another fine, maybe
> bigger but ridiculous anyway, and a some-months restriction which denies
> him the right to run a company: so he puts his brother in his place and
> it all goes on like before.
> This people hiring illegals must do jail, much jail, and be denied the
> roght to run any operation involving employees of any kind for very long
> time.


Some people whine that fines are just a money grab for the government,
but when it comes to businesses, there are some companies out there who
are willing to accept that small fines are just another cost of doing
business.

I was in the commercial vehicle enforcement business at a time when
there was upper management and a government that understood that what
they needed to do was to make it more expensive to get caught operating
unlawfully than it was to comply.

As an example, brake adjustment was always one of our worst compliance
problems. More than 50% of the trucks on the road with air brakes had
brakes out of adjustment. It is a simple problem to detect and to
repair, and truck drivers are required to do pre-trip inspections.

We used to just put them out of service so there would be down time and
the cost of road service if they could not adjust them themselves. We
were pushed to start laying charges, and the fine was $90. It didn't do
much good. They boosted the fine to $180. Still not much improvement.
Then they boosted the fine to almost $500. Withing a few months the out
of service rate for brake adjustment plummeted.

Sure, the truckers whined that it was a money grab, but the fact is that
the fine was so high that they didn't want to get nailed with it. It
took a $500 to get them to comply.