U.S. company fined $650,000 for illegally hiring children to clean meat processing plants

MicroWave@lemmy.world to News@lemmy.world – 610 points – U.S. company fined $650,000 for illegally hiring children to clean meat processing plants
nbcnews.com

Fayette Janitorial Service LLC agreed to pay nearly $650,000 in civil penalties and the court-ordered mandate that it no longer employs minors.

A Tennessee-based sanitation company has agreed to pay more than half a million dollars after a federal investigation found it illegally hired at least two dozen children to clean dangerous meat processing facilities in Iowa and Virginia.

The U.S. Department of Labor announced Monday that Fayette Janitorial Service LLC entered into a consent judgment, in which the company agrees to nearly $650,000 in civil penalties and the court-ordered mandate that it no longer employs minors. The February filing indicated federal investigators believed at least four children had still been working at one Iowa slaughterhouse as of Dec. 12.

U.S. law prohibits companies from employing people younger than 18 to work in meat processing plants because of the hazards.

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Half a million doesn't seem like enough tbh

Honestly when it comes to severe crimes the punishments should put them out of business. Yeah some people will lose their jobs, but suddenly there's a vacuum that can be filled, and it's not like the expertise is gone. Someone else can start a better company that doesn't do illegal shit and fill that vacuum.

Isn't that how capitalism is supposed to work anyway?

I keep hearing this about how companies failing being how capitalism is supposed to work. Capitalism doesn't give a shit about bad companies failing or competition. Capitalism is concerned with the ownership of the means of production. Lack of regulation and competition works tremendously for the owners of capital and those owners will use their capital to foster such profitable environments. This is how capitalism works.

This isn't a skilled industry, hence why they have children working there. The equipment/facilities is the real value. Unless the government wants to take control or find new management, the jobs are dependent on whoever owns the machines.

Or, just maybe, we close the meat packing plant anyways because everyone should eat less meat.

It's not even the slaughterhouse. The meat packing plant contracted out to "Ricky's bone saw cleaning LLC" who is paying the fine for child labor. They might have a few jugs of detergents and sanitizers plus some work vans.

No no no! It's the responsibility of the corporations to act ethically! Consumers bear no fault in how corporations decide do business!!

Yikes, sorry about that. I had the urge to sound ridiculous for a second. I agree. Money talks and we should all be mindful of what we say.

Yeah was just wondering how it compares to the money they saved using child labor.

And the executives are in jail? Right?

Oh, I can see how you might think that from having basic common sense. But actually, laws are only for poors.

Only if they didn’t give a cut to the regulators. This isn’t a fine. It’s payment so the regulators look the other way.

It’s cheaper for them to break the law and pay a “fine” then to go about things legitimately.

It’s the cost of doing business.

That's not all, folks! 🐷 This shit runs deep, this is merely the tip of the iceberg. I just can't wrap my head around children being brought into these places, trained, and then let loose--and no adult along that chain thinks to themselves that maybe there's a problem with that?!?!?!

From the article: 

  • One 14-year-old was severely injured while cleaning the drumstick packing line belt at the plant in Virginia, the investigation alleged.

  • The agreement stipulates that Fayette will hire a third-party consultant to monitor the company’s compliance with child labor laws for at least three years, as well as to facilitate trainings. The company must also establish a hotline for individuals to report concerns about child labor abuses.

  • The Labor Department’s latest statistics indicate the number of children being employed illegally in the U.S. has increased 88% since 2019.

This is all very performative, slap-on-the-wrist level punishment, and i imagine there are hundreds more children out there still working in shit conditions because nobody will say or do anything about it until more injuries/deaths force them to.

I wonder, also, how much that increase in children being employed illegally is them needing to in order to make ends meet at home due to corporate greedflation running rampant?

Like, yes, the companies shouldn't hire the kids. But also, we should address why those kids are willing to work those jobs in the first place.

It doesn't specifically say who these children were, but they were likely migrants because the child labor issue is actually an immigration issue.

https://www.npr.org/2023/05/04/1173697113/immigrant-child-labor-crisis

It's always immigrant kids. Nobody should be surprised that the companies that are willing to illegally employ immigrants are also willing to violate other labor laws.

Allow these people (the adults, not kids) to become legally employed and this problem will be drastically reduced.

I work for a top 50 by population city here in the US and they're hiring illegals left and right. They do it by bringing them in through a temp agency and then transferring them over to our books after six months.

There is no such thing as an illegal person. A business may have illegal hiring practices, though.

No fine for Perdue or Seaboard Triumph Foods though even though the kids were even allowed in the plants. How could we possibly hold them liable for vetting outside contractors.

That's the way it works. It's a risk management and mitigation strategy for companies. You hiring contractors and offload the liability.

From what I understand, and IANAL(with the best of em) we'd have to change the laws to go after companies for their contractor's liability/negligence.

I think you'd be able to go after Perdue or seaboard if you could prove they were grossly negligence or derelict or knowingly hired this contractorbecause they used kids.

But they can play that legal "plausible deniability" card otherwise.

Child labor laws are ruining this country! I started at the metal refinery when I was 9, and worked my way up to shift foreman by 12.

Once Trump gets in, and the "Freedom to be Poor" bill is passed than these damn woke liberals won't be able to limit these children's rights like this!

We'll pass Poe's Law too.

And they think an untrained minor will ever effectively clean food production compared to trained adult. Doesn't matter that they are endangering a minor and giving people food poisoning, as long as it's cheaper.

The money will be given to the children, right?

Sure will, money will go to Israel, they buy bombs, bombs find children therefore money being given to children!

I'd say one day for each hour of child labour for everyone who was involved in facilitating it, or had oversight responsibilities.

And yet in the same breath we often point out that prison time doesn't rehabilitate (think petty crime). I think realistic fines to individuals AND companies that are more than "cost of doing business," as well as blacklisting the (undoubtedly several) individals responsible from being able to hold that level of power in an industry, not just the company, then there may be a reasonable deterrent, and it won't be a languishing burden on tax payers to put these guys up in dressed up 4 star hotels.

People deliberately putting children's lives at risk should be jailed the same whether or not they are doing it from hiding behind a limited liability. And also the prisons should be changed so that they are actually about rehabilitation.

I mean, I'm okay with disposing of these shitty people. They're obviously irredeemable.

The For-profit prison system is fucked, but that doesn't mean jails in general are bad.

i don't know how they can call these places "meat processing plants". they are slaughter houses. for slaughtering

Because people are detached from ethics and humanity as an intended function of capitalism. If people regarded animal welfare every time they needed to eat by being exposed to the slaughter, line might go down. Media is sanitized whatever degree maximizes potential consumer bases, and ultimately profits.

Interesting. I always pictured people in the meat packing business as having such high moral standards.

Bad idea. Just increase the fines so they outweigh any potential savings the business may have received.

Hit them where it hurts, in their wallets.

Why is it bad?

It's a distraction.

How so?

From a better solution that actually improves the lives of people.

He's just advocating for revenge. It doesn't solve anything.

Let me say it again for the people in the back: it's better to redistribute these people's wealth than to throw them in prison without redistributing their wealth.

Try not to distract from the problem at hand.

"Company is still $3.5m in the black on the project after government fines"

even assuming the truth of the idea that it's good for children to have jobs, do they have to be cruelest and most grueling upton-sinclair ass jobs you can find? at least adults can drink after a long shift at the meat processing factory. kids should be working the register at a movie theater or something. also i can't imagine a small child is as efficient at cleaning out vats of blood as an adult would be