Labor Dept. says Tennessee firm employed minors to clean meat saws, head splitters at slaughterhouses

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: NBC News

Feb. 21, 2024, 11:29 AM EST


Another industrial slaughterhouse cleaner has been accused by the U.S. Labor Department of illegally employing children as young as 13 to clean dangerous equipment on overnight shifts, according to a temporary restraining order filed in federal court Wednesday.

The Labor Department said that Tennessee-based Fayette Janitorial LLC illegally employed 15 children to clean a Perdue Farms poultry plant in Virginia and nine to clean a Seaboard Triumph Foods pork processing plant in Iowa. They cleaned such equipment as head splitters and meat bandsaws.

Fayette has 600 employees in 30 states, according to the company’s website. Children under the age of 18 are not allowed to work in slaughterhouses because the work is considered by the federal government to be too dangerous. Last summer, a 16-year-old migrant was killed at a Mississippi slaughterhouse when he was sucked into a machine that he was cleaning.

“Federal laws were established decades ago to prevent employers from profiting from the employment of children in dangerous jobs, yet we continue to find employers exploiting children.” said Jessica Looman, administrator of the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division. “As we’ve unfortunately seen in this case, employers’ violations of federal child labor laws have real consequences on children’s lives. Our actions to stop these violations will help ensure that more children are not hurt in the future.”

Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/fayette-janitorial-hired-minors-clean-meat-saws-slaughterhouses-labor-rcna139655

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Link to Department of Labor NEWS RELEASE - US Department of Labor seeks injunction to stop use of ‘oppressive child labor’ by Fayette Janitorial Service at meat processing facilities

[CrispyQ]

1. Not to make light of the danger, but exposing kids to this kind of heinous work borders on abuse in my opinion.

Anything is okay if the bottom line justifies it. $$$

I'm sick of predatory capitalism.

[Bayard]

2. Head splitters.....

I'm not sure I want to know how those are used.

[Irish_Dem]

3. What are we doing to the children of this country?

-Children employed doing very dangerous jobs overnight.
-Children murdered with military grade weapons as they sit in school.
-Ten year old rape victims forced to have a rapist's baby.
-Children told they cannot read American classics.
-Children being told LGBT are evil and to be avoided.
-LGBT children being killed at school by other kids.
-Some state governors refusing to take federal dollars to feed hungry children.
-Government leaders insisting children not receive vaccines for common childhood illnesses.

If a society cannot protect its children it has failed as a society.

[lynintenn]

4. I live in Tennessee and there is too much wrong in this sate.

[japple]

5. Perdue Chicken: Don't buy it

[Marthe48]

6. My parents owned a grocery store

We started helping very young. I think I was 8 or so, the first time I helped take inventory on New Year's Day. All of us kids worked there, after school, weekends. Not all the time, or all of us at once. No pay -- my Dad once said we had food on the table and a roof over our heads, GDI.

Anyway, I remember working in the meat department. I ran the meat slicer, boned meat for the ground beef and stew meat, and after the store closed, cleaned the equipment, the meat saw, the meat grinder, pans, paddles, the slicer and the other equipment. I was scared of the blade on the slicer and the circular blade in the meat saw. That blade was 1/2" flexible steel, probably about 4' across, sharp enough to cut through bones. My Dad and brothers could maneuver it into a ring about a foot across and it was much easier to wash (by hand, in a utility sink) They'd do their trick and I'd wash it, but I still got plenty of nicks on my fingers from that part of the job.

When I had my own kids, I taught them to do work, use their hands, had them do a few chores for a small allowance, but I never made them my own cheap or free labor. When we read stories like this, and we see the relaxing of restrictions on child labor, just remember--those are children and they are working away their childhood.

[Wonder Why]

7. It needs to be a federal crime with prison time for any manager allowing an underaged child to do such work.