DES MOINES, Iowa — 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 has entered into a consent judgment in which the company agrees to nearly $650,000 in civil penalties and a court order to no longer employ minors. The February document indicated that federal investigators believed at least four children were still working at an Iowa slaughterhouse as of December 12.
US law prohibits companies from employing people under the age of 18 to work in meat processing plants due to the dangers.
The Department of Labor alleged that Fayette used 15 underage workers at a Perdue Farms plant in Accomac, Virginia, and at least nine at Seaboard Triumph Foods in Sioux City, Iowa. The work included sanitizing dangerous equipment, such as head cutters, jaw extractors and meat band saws, in dangerous conditions where animals are killed and delivered.
A 14-year-old was seriously injured while cleaning the drumstick packaging line belt at the Virginia factory, the investigation alleged.
Perdue Farms and Seaboard Triumph Foods said in February they terminated their contracts with Fayette.
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 training. The company must also establish a hotline for individuals to report concerns about child labor abuses.
A spokesperson for Fayette told the Associated Press in February that the company was cooperating with the investigation and has a “zero tolerance policy for minor labor.”
The Department of Labor has drawn attention to a growing list of child labor violations across the country, including fatal mutilation of a 16-year-old who worked at a poultry plant in Mississippi, the death of a 16-year-old after an accident at a sawmill in Wisconsinand last year’s report from more than 100 children illegally employed by Packers Sanitation Services Inc., or PSSI, at 13 cold storage plants. PSSI paid more than $1.5 million in civil penalties.
The latest statistics from the Department of Labor indicate that the number of illegally employed children in the US has increased by 88% since 2019.
This story originally appeared on Time.com read the full story
