The U.S. Department of Labor announced Friday that one of the largest cleaning companies for food processing firms employed over 100 children in dangerous jobs at 13 meatpacking facilities across the nation.
Last summer, the investigation into Packers Sanitation Services Inc. or PSSI began. The Department of Labor searched three meatpacking facilities owned by JBS USA in Nebraska and Minnesota and found 31 workers under the age of 13. The officials also searched the headquarters of PSSI in Kieler, Wisconsin. Eight states had plants with underage workers.
The department then reviewed records of 55 PSSI cleaning locations and found more violations involving children aged 13-17. In November, the agency received a temporary injunction, and in December, a permanent one, when PSSI signed a consent judgment committing them not illegally to employ minors.
Jessica Looman is the principal deputy administrator at the Department’s Wage and Hour Division. She told reporters that children have been found using caustic cleaners and cleaning “dangerous equipment like razor-sharp blades and skull-splitters” for the past three-year period.
Officials said that at least three of these minors, among them a 13-year-old, were burned by the cleaning chemicals used in the JBS facility in Grand Island.
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Rhonda Burke, a department spokesperson, said that some of the children were enrolled at school during the day and worked overnight shifts.
The maximum fine allowed by federal law is $15,138 per minor. Investigators, however, believe that the company employed far more children than the 102 they verified. Looman stated that PSSI is required to identify these children and remove them from hazardous work under the consent judgment.
Looman stated: “There is no doubt that this was not a clerical mistake or the actions of bad managers or rogue employees.” These findings show a failure of PSSI to enforce the law and ensure that children weren’t working. PSSI’s systems flagged in many instances that these children were not old enough to work. Yet they were still working at these facilities.
Gina Swenson said that in a Friday statement, the company had “a zero tolerance policy” against hiring anyone younger than 18 years old.
She said that as soon as PSSI learned of the allegations, it began audits and hired an outside law firm to strengthen its policies. She noted that PSSI also provided additional training to hiring managers on how to spot identity theft.
Swenson said that PSSI still employs none of the minors who federal investigators identified. The Department of Labor has also “not identified any managers currently employed by the company” who know of inappropriate conduct, he added.
PSSI has said it employs about 17,000 people working at more than 700 locations nationwide, making it one of the largest food-processing-plant cleaning companies.
The 13 plants that were found to have violations are located in Arkansas, Colorado, Indiana, Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska, Tennessee, and Texas. The plants with the highest number of violations were JBS in Grand Island in Nebraska, where PSSI employed a total of 27 minors; the Cargill in Dodge City in Kansas, where 26 children worked; and the JBS in Worthington in Minnesota, where 22 children did. The Labor Department searched a Tyson plant in Sedalia, Missouri, but found no violations.
The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW), which represents workers in meatpacking plants, has called PSSI “one of industry’s worst actors”.
Marc Perrone said that a fine was not enough. Their entire business model is based on the exploitation and abuse of workers. They also use vicious tactics to break up unions, which violates human rights. He called on the meatpacking sector to use its power to stop the exploitation and abuse of children.
When asked about the immigration status, Seema Nada, a solicitor at the Labor Department, said that the department only focuses on whether the children are minors.
Michael Lazzeri is the regional administrator for the Wage and Hour Division of the Department. He said that because it’s a civil law enforcement agency, the officials cannot comment on whether the workers at the plants could face criminal charges or if any of them were victims of trafficking. He said that any trafficking detected is reported to other agencies.
Looman stated that the Wage and Hour Division had seen a 50 percent increase in child labor since 2018. This includes minors working longer hours than allowed in jobs otherwise legal, using equipment they shouldn’t be using while working legal positions, and children working in places they shouldn’t have been employed.