A Tennessee-based sanitation company has been fined more than $649,000 after an investigation found it illegally employed at least 20 children in slaughterhouses and meatpacking facilities, the Department of Labor said this week.
The company, Fayette Janitorial Service LLC, was found to have hired the children, some as young as 13, on overnight shifts using caustic materials to clean “dangerous killing floor equipment” at facilities in Sioux City, Iowa, and Accomac, Virginia. ., the department said a press release.
a temporary restraining order in February the company demanded it stop hiring the children, and on Monday in federal court it agreed to pay the fine, hire a third party to ensure no future employ underage workers and establish a program for reporting violations, it said documents submitted in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Iowa.
It is illegal under the Fair Labor Standards Act to hire anyone under the age of 18 to do the type of dangerous work that often involves slaughtering, processing, rendering and packaging meat and poultry. But that hasn't stopped thousands of migrant children from coming to the United States from Mexico and Central America to do dangerous work, including in meatpacking plants.
“The Department of Labor is committed to preventing our nation's children from being exploited and endangered in jobs they should never have access to,” Christine Heri, an attorney with the Labor Department, said in the news release. “In 2024, we will still see American companies employing children in high-risk jobs, risking their safety for profit.”
During the last financial year, Labor Department investigators found that more than 5,800 children were employed in violation of federal child labor laws.
In a statement, Fayette said she had cooperated fully with the Labor Department throughout the investigation and had strived to maintain a “compliant” workforce. “The realization that the use of fraudulent identification documents had allowed individuals under the age of 18 to circumvent our policies and procedures required immediate action,” Matthew R. Armor, the company's CEO, said in an email Tuesday.
The investigation followed an article in The New York Times Magazine that reported that Fayette had hired migrant children to work the nightly cleaning crew at the Accomac, Virginia, plant run by Perdue Farms. The article was part of a series of pieces by Hannah Dreier, who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting on Monday.
One of the children, Marcos Cux, was adopted by Fayette at age 13, shortly after arriving in Virginia from Guatemala. In February 2022, he was seriously injured at the Perdue plant after reaching into a conveyor belt that suddenly started moving and tore his forearm to the bone, the Times article said.
According to a complaint filed by the Labor Department in February seeking an injunction, “someone from the Perdue facility's sanitation office” called 911 to report the injury. When a dispatcher asked the employee's age, the caller remained silent and then responded with “Um” before the line disconnected. When the call was reconnected 30 seconds later, the dispatcher again asked for the injured worker's age and was told he was 19, according to the complaint.
Marcos missed a month of school and required three surgeries, including skin grafts from his thighs to his arm, and six months of physical therapy. Fayette paid his medical bills, the Times article said.
A spokeswoman for Perdue Farms said in an email Tuesday that the company terminated its contract with Fayette this year and had since “strengthened the screening and monitoring process for all of our third-party contractors.” Seaboard Triumph Foods, the Sioux City, Iowa, facility, also said in a statement that it had terminated its contract with Fayette.