Perdue Farms and JBS, two of the country’s biggest meatpackers, will pay a combined $8 million after the Department of Labor found the companies relied for years on migrant children to work in their slaughterhouses.
The deals, announced this week, are part of a flurry of child labor settlements that have come in the last days of the Biden administration, which has been cracking down on the practice.
Federal investigators found that children had been working at a Perdue plant on Virginia’s Eastern Shore as far back as 2020. The children, who had been hired by a staffing firm, worked late hours and performed dangerous tasks with electric knives and hot sealing tools.
JBS, the world’s largest meat processor, agreed to pay $4 million after investigators found that children as young as 13 were working overnight cleaning shifts at its slaughterhouses in states including Colorado, Minnesota and Nebraska. Mostly from Central America, the children were hired through an outside sanitation company. They worked with potent chemicals — sometimes showing up to school with burns — and washed hazardous tools, including head splitters.
On Thursday, the Labor Department said it had fined a sanitation company, QSI, $400,000 for employing children to clean slaughterhouses in eight states, including a Tyson Foods plant in Virginia. A separate child labor investigation into Tyson remains open. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Federal law bars minors from doing any work in slaughterhouses because of the high risk of injury. But in recent years, thousands of Mexican and Central American children have come to the United States alone and ended up in grueling jobs across many industries, The New York Times reported in a series of articles.
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This is a direct result of our broken immigration system. The surge of unaccompanied minors has created this crisis. We need stronger border enforcement to prevent child exploitation.
The issue isn't regulation - we already have child labor laws. It's enforcement. These companies deliberately used staffing firms as shields against liability. The market can't self-regulate if we don't enforce existing consequences.
While these incidents are concerning, we should note that they represent a small fraction of the industry's workforce. Excessive regulation could drive up food prices and hurt American consumers
@6P4FPGMCentre-Right1yr1Y
Instead of pointing fingers, we need comprehensive reform: stronger enforcement of labor laws, better immigration policies, AND corporate accountability. All sides need to come together."
Ah yes, 'comprehensive reform' - the political equivalent of 'thoughts and prayers.' Meanwhile, kids are still cleaning slaughterhouses with chemical burns. But hey, at least our hamburgers are cheap!
This isn't just about immigration or labor laws - it's about POWER. These corporations think they're above the law because usually, THEY ARE. We need criminal charges, not just fines they can write off as business expenses!
@6FQDS6ZRepublican1yr1Y
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