From the Washington Post:
“One of the country’s largest food sanitation service providers has paid $1.5 million in penalties for illegally employing at least 102 children to clean 13 meatpacking plants on overnight shifts, the Labor Department announced Friday.
“The company, Packers Sanitation Services, allegedly employed minors as young as 13 to use caustic chemicals to clean ‘razor-sharp saws,’ head splitters and other dangerous equipment at meatpacking facilities in eight states, mostly in the Midwest and the South, in some cases for years. The plants are operated by some of the country’s most powerful meat and poultry producers, including JBS Foods, Tyson and Cargill. Those companies were not charged or fined.
“Investigators learned in recent months that at least three children suffered injuries, including a chemical burn to the face, while sanitizing kill floors and other areas of slaughterhouses in the middle of the night.”
“The child labor violations in this case were systemic and reached across eight states, and clearly indicate a corporate-wide failure by Packers Sanitation Services at all levels,” said Jessica Looman, principal deputy administrator of the Labor Department’s wage and hour division, in a prepared statement. “These children should never have been employed in meat packing plants and this can only happen when employers do no take responsibility to prevent child labor violations from occurring in the first place.”
Gina Swenson, a Packers spokesperson, said in a statement, “We have been crystal clear from the start: Our company has a zero-tolerance policy against employing anyone under the age of 18 and fully shares the [Labor Department’s] objective of ensuring full compliance at all locations.”
KC’s View:
The “zero tolerance” assertion lacks a little credibility, but let’s move past that. (It is all well and good to launch an audit after the Labor Department starts an investigation, but where the hell were you beforehand?)
I always wonder in such cases – and the Post notes that “child labor violations have been on the rise in the United States since 2015,” and that “the number of children found to be illegally employed in hazardous occupations, such as meatpacking and construction, spiked by 93 percent over the past seven years” – about the individuals who put children in these situations.
Don’t they have kids? Is it just that other people’s kids, especially the children of less financially prosperous people, have intrinsically less value than their own? Do they not feel shame? (I also look askance at the parents who allow their children to be put in such situations, but recognize that sometimes economic desperation creates choices bad and worse.)
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