Federal officials find more than 100 children doing dangerous jobs for slaughterhouse cleaning company
PSSI staff at Grand Island JBS factory.
US Department of Labor
The Labor Department said on Friday that it had found 102 children as young as 13 doing dangerous work overnight cleaning slaughterhouses in eight states in what the department called “a corporate-wide failure.” ” of one of the largest food hygiene companies in the country. Inc . packing house cleaning service.
In a statement, the company said: “We are pleased to finalize this settlement figure as part of our previously announced December resolution to the Department of Labor (DOL) to end the dispute. Our investigation was clear from the start: Our company has a zero-tolerance policy for hiring anyone under the age of 18 and fully shares the DOL’s goal of ensuring full compliance at all locations.”
“As soon as we became aware of the DOL allegations, we conducted numerous additional audits of our employee base. … Our audits and the DOL investigation confirmed that there are no individuals DOL deems under the age of 18 working for the company today, and many left PSSI years ago. aware of inappropriate behavior currently working for PSSI.”
“We are fully committed to working with the DOL to make additional improvements to enforce our ban on hiring anyone under the age of 18.”
Packers Sanitation Services paid a $1.5 million fine for the violations. According to the Department of Labor, the amount of the fine is set forth by the Fair Labor Standards Act, which allows a fine of $15,138 for each minor employed in violation of the law.
The Labor Department said night shift children used “caustic chemicals to clean razor-sharp saws.” The company employs 17,000 workers at 700 locations nationwide.
“Our investigation revealed that Packers Sanitation Services’ system flagged some young workers as minors, but the company ignored those signs. When the Wage and Hour Department reached out, subpoenaed, the adults — the people who recruited, hired, and supervised these children — tried to sabotage our plans to investigate their recruitment practices,” said Michael Lazzeri, administrator. the division’s regional manager in Chicago said.
The company signed a Decree with consent in December with the Department of Labor and agreed to comply with child labor laws after federal investigators documented 50 children working at slaughterhouses because of it. The company is taking “significant steps to ensure future compliance with the law, including hiring an external compliance specialist,” according to the consent decree.
The compliance specialist will conduct child labor audits and will be shared with the Department of Labor for three years.
In January, three Department of Homeland Security officials told NBC News that federal investigators were looking into whether any children had been arrested. labor trafficking victims.
They said Homeland Security Investigations agents interviewed children cleaning up a slaughterhouse in Grand Island, Nebraska.
There is no indication that DHS is investigating PSSI because trafficking. Instead, two DHS officials said, DHS is investigating to rule out the possibility that outside traffickers may have forced children to work for PSSI and profited from their labor.
