Food hygiene company accused of hiring at least 31 children to work shifts in slaughterhouses

A leading cleaning company is accused of hiring dozens of children to clean the slaughter floors of slaughterhouses during a cemetery shift, the Labor Department announced.

Packers Sanitation Services, Inc., or PSSI, a company contracted to work at slaughterhouses and meatpacking facilities across the county, allegedly employed at least 31 children — one 13-year-old — on shifts. overnight cleaning at three facilities in Nebraska and Minnesota, according to court documents filed Wednesday.

Those practices would violate the Fair Labor Standards Act, which prohibits “oppressive child labor” and minors from working in any type of hazardous work, according to the complaint. Regulations on Child Labor of the Ministry of Labor point Many roles in abattoirs and meat packing facilities are dangerous for minors.

In a court filing, U.S. Labor Secretary Marty Walsh asked the Nebraska County Federal Court to issue a temporary injunction and preliminary nationwide injunction against the company preventing the employment of minors. while the Department of Labor continues to investigate.

Preliminary evidence suggests the company may also be recruiting more children under similar conditions at 400 other locations across the country, in addition to the 31 minors who worked at the three locations that investigators identified. received, according to the petition.

The court partially approved the Labor Department’s request in the filing Thursday. That order requires PSSI to “immediately cease and desist from using oppressive child labor” and comply with a Department of Labor investigation.

A hearing is set for November 23 to discuss whether the order will be extended, modified or dissolved.

In a statement to NBC News, a spokesperson for PSSI said it “has an absolute company-wide ban on hiring anyone under the age of 18 and has zero tolerance for any major violations of the law.” which book – period.”

The spokesperson added that the company requires the use of the federal E-Verify system for new hires, “as well as extensive training, document verification, biometrics, and multiple layers of testing.”

“While fraudulent individuals can of course find ways to engage in fraud or identity theft, we believe in our company’s strict compliance policies and will protect ourselves accordingly. strongly against these claims.”

The spokesperson added that executives were “surprised” by the DOL filing because the company “cooperatively cooperated with their investigation, producing a variety of documents and responses.”

The Department of Labor did not immediately respond to the PSSI’s investigation into compliance and cooperation claims.

The company, which has been owned by a series of private equity funds since 2007, says it employs 17,000 people at more than 700 locations nationwide. according to its website.

Late night, early morning and chemical burns

The Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division began investigating PSSI on August 24, when law enforcement notified that the company may be recruiting children, the lawsuit says.

Officials executed search warrants at two plants owned by food processing company JBS USA — in Grand Island, Nebraska and Worthington, Minnesota — and at a Turkey Valley Farms poultry processing plant in Marshall, Minnesota. Searches were also conducted at PSSI’s local offices in Grand Island and Worthington, where workers were employed, and the company’s Keiler, Wisconsin, corporate office.

In a statement, JBS US Ethics and Compliance Director, Michael Koenig, said the allegations against PSSI “represent a clear violation of our ethics policies” if true.

“We immediately launched an independent third-party audit of all our facilities to thoroughly assess the situation,” the statement continued. “JBS has zero tolerance for child labor, discrimination or unsafe working conditions for anyone working in our facilities.”

Turkey Valley Farms’ general manager, Les Goff, said in a statement that the company “takes these allegations very seriously” and is looking into the matter internally.

“We expect all contractors to share our commitment to the health and safety of any individual working in our facilities and to adhere to these principles to promote safe work environment and in compliance with all applicable federal and state employment laws,” the statement continued.

“We are closely monitoring the actions of the Department of Labor regarding Packers Sanitation Services Inc. and will take all appropriate actions, based on the results of the investigation.”

Labor department officials also requested school records, interviewed confidential sources – including minors working in the facilities – and conducted surveillance in which they allegedly looked found minors entering the facility to work the night shift as part of the investigation, the complaint states.

The investigation found that minors mopped floors and killed people and various machines — including meat and bone saws and grinders — during shifts at the cemetery, according to the lawsuit.

The complaint says PSSI recruited at least a dozen 17-year-olds in three slaughterhouses, fourteen 16-year-olds, three 15-year-olds, one 14-year-old man and one 13-year-old man.

Interviews with the children – conducted in Spanish, their first language, according to the complaint – showed that some children started shifts at the facilities at 11 p.m. and work until 5, 6 or 7 am. Some work up to six or seven days. a week.

School records show that a 14-year-old student, who worked at the Grand Island facility from 11 p.m. to 5 a.m., five to six days a week, from December 2021 to last April, fell asleep during the school day. class and missed school after a chemical burn injury. At least two other minors also suffered chemical burns, the lawsuit states.

‘The kids…can’t wait’

The complaint says that during the investigation, PSSI managers “attempted to obstruct or interfere” with the collection of evidence, including by attempting to obstruct interviews with employees of the conditions. investigators by surrounding the room where they are being conducted and looking minors in the eye.

Managers also attempted to hide or delete material, including work-related text messages and incident/accident reports, the lawsuit states.

Late last month, the Labor Department began looking into 47 other locations where PSSI employs workers – which investigators suspect have more children, the complaint alleges, pointing to photos from the filing. Watches at eight other factories appear to have children.

“Although Wage and Hour is continuing to fill in records to identify such children, it is slow and labor-intensive work. The children, however, work overnight on the slaughter floor of their slaughterhouse. these slaughterhouses cannot wait,” the complaint states.

Previous issues of occupational safety

Incidents of injuries and even deaths employed by PSSI are not new.

The company had a Difficult worker safety records in recent years: three PSSI workers have died on the job since 2018, including one who was beheaded while cleaning a chicken chiller, according to Occupational Safety and Health Administration records specified in a March report of the monitoring group Private Equity Project.

And four others had accidents that resulted in amputations, according to the report.

Blackstone, the private equity fund that owns PSSI, intense disagree with the report’s findings.

Blackstone spokesman Matthew Anderson said: “The so-called ‘report’ – which is full of errors and misinformation – is from a biased anti-private capital shell group. Regarding the total of four PSSI deaths that have been recorded by OSHA since 2018, Blackstone added, “In those cases: one was clearly identified as a non-work-related death .

Last year, OSHA cited PSSI for 17 violations for failing to train workers on the dangers of liquid nitrogen after Nitrogen leak kills six people worked for the Food Foundation at a poultry plant in Gainesville, Georgia. Those killed were not PSSI employees, but PSSI is responsible for cleaning up the plant and making sure its workers are safe there, OSHA said.

A PSSI spokesperson said company employees were not on site at the time of the leak and were not involved in the manufacturing process or mechanical maintenance of the equipment.

One Analysis of 2017 by the National Employment Law Project, an advocacy group, found that PSSI has some of the worst workplace injury rates in the country.

PSSI describes the report as flawed.

When they are employed by PSSI, workers sign paperwork that assumes the risk of death and injury on the job, NBC News reported last year. Many of its employees have criminal records on file and have difficulty finding work elsewhere – something advocates such as the Private Equity Project say discourage workers from reporting hazardous conditions. for fear that they might lose their jobs.

According to a Labor Department report obtained by NBC News via FOIA last year, OSHA conducted PSSI inspections 56 times over a five-year period, from 2015 to 2020, and issued 38 citations against the company.