A Tennessee-based plumbing company has agreed to pay greater than half one million dollars after a federal investigation found that it illegally hired no less than two dozen children to scrub dangerous meat processing plants in Iowa and Virginia.
The U.S. Department of Labor announced Monday that Fayette Janitorial Service LLC has entered a consent judgment by which the corporate agrees to just about $650,000 in civil penalties and a court order to stop employing minors. The February filing showed that federal investigators believed no less than 4 children were still working at a slaughterhouse in Iowa as of Dec. 12.
U.S. law prohibits firms from hiring people under 18 to work in meat processing plants due to the risks.
The Labor Department alleged that Fayette employed 15 underage staff at a Perdue Farms plant in Accomac, Virginia, and no less than nine at Seaboard Triumph Foods in Sioux City, Iowa. The work included disinfecting hazardous equipment corresponding to head splitters, jaw pullers and meat band saws in hazardous conditions that kill and exploit animals.
According to the investigation, a 14-year-old was seriously injured while cleansing the drumstick packing line on the plant in Virginia.
Perdue Farms and Seaboard Triumph Foods announced in February that they’d terminated their contracts with Fayette.
The agreement requires Fayette to rent an out of doors consultant to watch the corporate’s compliance with child labor laws and supply training for no less than three years. The company must also establish a hotline for people to report concerns related to child labor abuse.
A spokesman for Fayette told the Associated Press in February that the corporate was cooperating with the investigation and had a “zero-tolerance policy for marginal workers.”
In response to the case, Perdue Farms launched its own investigation. the corporate said last yr, adding that child labor has no place of their business. “We are appalled by these latest allegations as they are not representative of who we are as a company and what we stand for,” Perdue said in an announcement. “To this end, we conduct a comprehensive review of third-party child labor prevention and protection procedures, including contractor compliance review and identity fraud screening.”
The Department of Labor has highlighted a growing list of kid labor violations across the country, including fatal mutilation of a 16-year-old working in a poultry factory in Mississippi, the death of a 16-year-old afterwards an accident at a sawmill in Wisconsinand last yr’s report from greater than 100 children employed illegally by Packers Sanitation Services Inc. (PSSI) at 13 meat processing plants. PSSI paid over $1.5 million in civil penalties.
The latest statistics from the Department of Labor show that the number of kids employed illegally within the U.S. has increased by 88% since 2019.
-With reporting by Amanda Gerut
