A child labor regulator has said the $1.5 million fine levied on a slaughterhouse cleaning company that illegally employed 102 minors at 13 dangerous plants from Minnesota to Texas was paltry.
Reid Maki, coordinator of the Child Labor Coalition at the National Consumers League, said the sentence imposed on Wisconsin-based Packers Sanitation Services was too light to deter future offenders.
The plumbing company worked illegally with youths between the ages of 13 and 17 in slaughterhouses across the United States. Some of them suffered chemical burns from strong cleaning agents and had to work night shifts to clean dangerous carcass cutting machines.
“You have to worry employers that there will be consequences for illegally hiring children,” Maki said on Friday.
“We need to send a strong message to companies that are illegally employing children in hazardous environments to stop, and the way to do that is really significant fines that are actually hurting the company’s bottom line.”
Federal investigators discovered children working in dangerous conditions. Pictured: A Packers employee working in the ground beef room at the JBS facility in Grand Island, Nebraska
Government investigators found children working in dangerous conditions. Pictured: A Packers employee uses a hose to clean processing equipment at the JBS facility in Grand Island, Nebraska
The $1.5 million fine was less than half a percent of Packers’ $460 million annual revenue — meaning it would only take the cleaning subcontractors “a little over a day.” to get that money back,” Maki added.
The Department of Labor (DOL) said Friday Packers was fined at the end of an investigation that began last August. The fine is $15,138 for each illegally hired child — the maximum civil penalty that could be imposed.
“The child labor violations in this case were systemic, spanning eight states, and clearly indicate a company-wide failure of Packers Sanitation Services at all levels,” said DOL Administrator Jessica Looman.
“These children should never have been employed in meat processing plants and that can only happen if employers fail to take responsibility to prevent child labor violations from occurring in the first place,” added Looman.
Investigators first found 31 children who worked night shifts for packers at Turkey Valley Farms in Marshall, Minnesota, and plants of billionaire food giant JBS in Grand Island, Nebraska, and Worthington, Minnesota.
The investigation quickly spread to other plants overseen by Packers as investigators fanned out across Arizona, Colorado, Indiana, Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska, Tennessee and Texas.
At a Cargill plant in Dodge City, Kansas, they found 26 youths employed, resulting in one of the largest recorded violations.
Packers spokeswoman Gina Swenson told that the company has a “zero tolerance policy” for hiring underage children and that none of the people identified in the investigation work for the company today.
“Once we became aware of the DOL’s allegations, we conducted several additional audits of our workforce and retained an outside law firm to review and further strengthen our policies in this area,” Swenson said.
“We’ve also conducted several additional training sessions for hiring managers, including on identity theft detection.”
Packers employs approximately 17,000 people at more than 700 locations across the country.
A Packers employee cleans in limited visibility at the JBS facility in Worthington, Minnesota
A Packers promotional image of employees at work. Investigators said employees, including children, handle strong cleaning supplies that leave them with “corrosive burns.”
A JBS plant in Worthington, Minnesota, where children were illegally employed to clean equipment on night shifts, according to labor officials
Maki said the DOL is understaffed and struggling to investigate the extent of violations across the US. Officials must prosecute companies like JBS, Tyson Foods and Cargill that have allowed underage cleaners at their facilities.
“We would like to see higher and more robust fines for situations like this where children are put at risk,” he said.
“This requires Congress to increase fines, and we are working with congressional offices to get that done.”
Investigators turned their attention to Packers in August after receiving a tip that teenagers were working at the three slaughterhouses in Nebraska and Minnesota. They executed search warrants for access to the plants and company headquarters in Keiler.
They found violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act, which prohibits children from working more than three hours overnight and operating dangerous equipment during school days, the department said.
The minors carried out “dangerous work cleaning industrial electric-powered slaughter and meat processing plants on the killing floors of meat packing and slaughter plants” in the middle of the night, according to court documents.
They cleaned machines with such ominous names as the Heavy Duty Head Splitter, the Dehorner, and the Dominator Mixer/Grinder, which court documents describe as a “125-horsepower behemoth capable of grinding 36,000 pounds of meat an hour.”
Several young workers, including a 13-year-old, suffered “serious chemical burns” from using Packers’ powerful cleaning chemicals, often in poor visibility and with grease and flesh strewn on the floor.
The subcontractor also intimidated its young employees into not cooperating with government inspectors and “allegedly deleted and tampered with work records,” investigators said.
Chicago-based department administrator Michael Lazzeri said officers “marked some young workers as minors, but the company ignored the markings,” and then they “attempted to derail our efforts to investigate their employment practices.”
The DOL would not discuss the nationality or immigration status of child workers. Court records of interviews with the youths show that they spoke Spanish, not English.
Industry experts say the Packers scandal is just the “tip of the iceberg” of America’s child labor crisis.
Federal investigators recorded a massive 37 percent increase in the number of children working illegally in America’s factories, restaurants and other workplaces last year, a study by found.
Federal investigators recorded a massive 37 percent increase in the number of children working illegally in America’s factories, restaurants and other workplaces last year, a study by found.
Department of Labor inspectors found that 3,876 children worked in violation of labor codes in fiscal 2022. That includes a worrying 688 who toiled in hazardous conditions, often with hazardous equipment — a 26 percent increase from 2021.
Labor officials and child abuse experts said those numbers are a fraction of how many are actually working in violation of labor laws, which can number in the hundreds of thousands.
With unemployment low and a shortage of adult workers, bosses have turned to youth to help fill the gap, experts said. Even unscrupulous managers are benefiting from the influx of desperate young migrants who need cash and don’t ask questions.