Many news and investigative reporting agencies (NYT, WaPo, Guardian, NBC and others) have written this month about meat processing plants illegally hiring more than 100 children, between the ages of 13 and 17, as night shift laborers across 8 states in the USA. They performed hazardous work, and there were injuries. Why, who, what, where, and how did this happen?
Related posts:
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Child Labor is the True Image of Industrialization
Industrialized Child Labor
Child labor, labor required from those under 18 years of age, is a particular form of exploitation that is considered by many global organizations as a violation of human rights. Often it also involves the complexity of immigration status discrimination and child trafficking. But it is also wrapped up with economic exploitation, which usually Westerners believe are issues for poorer countries. Unfortunately, exploitation of children happens everywhere, including in the United States of America.
Prior to the 20th century, the USA population mainly lived in rural settings, and it was generally understood that the issue of child labor fell along socioeconomic class, with the expectation that poor and working class children had to work. Mostly, this meant children working with their family on their farms, or on nearby farms.
At the turn of the 20th century, agricultural families were already used to hard work, manual labor, and often education came second to planting, harvesting, and farm animal care. Everyone in the family pulled their own weight, so the unit as a whole could survive. But, this form of child labor was within the family’s control, and concerns for the child’s wellbeing was presumably paramount.
When the USA started to industrialize, and businesses started to hire, many rural agricultural families moved to the cities for those jobs. But industrialization required more labor than they had bodies, and families required more money than they had anticipated, a mixture that urged families to make their children work. The whole family worked hard hours, mostly in terrible warehouse conditions (think sweatshops), with little company concern to their safety, education, or welfare. The children were seen as little adults, but were incapable of protecting themselves.
The federal child labor provisions, authorized by the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA), are commonly known as the child labor laws. They were enacted to make sure that when young people work, the work would be safe, and did not jeopardize their health, well-being, or educational opportunities.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics website has been down since 17 July 2021, but a snapshot shows they posted this: From the Industrial Revolution through the 1930s was a period in which children worked in a wide variety of occupations. Now, nearly 110 years after the story of the chieftain was told, the overt presence of widespread child labor in New York or any other American city no longer exists. (Bold is my notation.)
They were absolutely wrong.
The Law on Agriculture Child Labor
In farm related work, there are summaries (and lots of specifics) about permissible jobs and hours of work by age (1):
- Youth 16 years and older may perform any agricultural job, whether hazardous or not, for unlimited hours;
- Youth 14 and 15 years old may perform any nonhazardous farm job outside of school hours;
- Youth 12 and 13 years old may work outside of school hours in nonhazardous jobs, either with a parent’s written consent or on the same farm as the parent(s);
- Youth under 12 years old may perform jobs on farms owned or operated by a parent, or with a parent’s written consent, outside of school hours in nonhazardous jobs on farms not covered by minimum wage requirements.
- Children of any age are allowed to work on a small farm owned or operated by a parent.
Source: Excerpted from the Handy Reference Guide to the Fair Labor Standards Act, published by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment Standards Administration, Wage and Hour Division, WH Publication 1282, Revised October 1996. See Title 29 C.F.R, Part 570, for a more complete explanation of child labor regulation.
The Current 2022-23 Facts
There are some harrowing facts about child labor and agriculture, that are reminiscent of the movie Snowpiercer, and pops photographic images in my brain (like the above) about the start of industrialization and its misuse of children. But even today the numbers are daunting.
- At the beginning of 2020, 63 million girls and 97 million boys were providing child labor.
- UNICEF is explicit, 1 in 10 children worldwide are subject to child labor.
- 70% of these children work in agriculture.
The recent reports are not the kind of news story about a family farm where the young 13 year old gathers eggs before school, or takes time off from school to help with the harvest. The news story hitting all the major outlets is more a story of how the politically connected, powerful beef and meat processing industries abused and it appears fl\
agrantly disregarded children’s safety for their bottom line.
The Story Hitting News Now
The Agri-Pulse and NYT reported on 17 February, 2023 that the Packers Sanitation Services Inc. (PSSI), paid a $1.5 million penalty for employing at least 102 children, as young as 13, in dangerous meat-processing plants to clean butchering equipment with chemical cleaners. At least 3 of the children were injured on the job according to reports, some experiencing caustic chemical burns and other injuries. NBC reports that several of these children began their shifts at the facilities at 11 p.m. and worked until 5, 6 or 7 a.m, with some working up to six or seven days a week.
- PSSI is a Wisconsin-based staffing agency, Time wrote, whose task was to fill open jobs in the food-services and agricultural industries on a contract basis, and is owned by the Blackstone Group. More on them below.
The Guardian named the states in which the children were employed, including: Arkansas, Colorado, Indiana, Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska, Tennessee and Texas. Additionally, the NYT stated that the US Labor Department indicated that the children employed were working to clean plants operated by major meat companies, like Tyson Foods, Cargill, JBS and others; with JBS having the most children employed (1).
The children were hired to clean razor-sharp (2) processing equipment (e.g., like back saws, brisket saws, and head splitters), with hazardous chemicals. The NYT wrote, that under the Fair Labor Standards Act, Packers was fined $15,138 for each illegally employed child — the maximum civil monetary penalty allowed under federal law.
The Court and parties reached a settlement in December 2022, but it is news since the fine has now been acknowledgd and paid. The NYT noted the company’s response: Our company has a zero-tolerance policy against employing anyone under the age of 18 and fully shares the D.O.L.’s objective of ensuring full compliance at all locations, Packers said. As soon as we became aware of the D.O.L.’s allegations, we conducted multiple additional audits of our employee base, and hired a third-party law firm to review and help further strengthen our policies in this area.
Despite the press release given to the media by PSSI, there were also reports that their hiring systems actually flagged some workers as underage, but the company ignored the warnings. Meanwhile the managerial staff in the reviewed meat processing plants, actively tried to ”derail” investigations.
USAToday noted, that the Labor Department claimed that employees intimidated underage workers to discourage them from cooperating with investigators and that at least one employee deleted or manipulated employment records. They continued, taking advantage of children, exposing them to workplace dangers – and interfering with a federal investigation – demonstrates Packers Sanitation Services Inc.’s flagrant disregard for the law and for the well-being of young workers, Michael Lazzeri, regional administrator for the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division, said in a statement.
The Politics
I am not going to go in depth here, but I will raise some of the issues for my readers to consider.
Big meat corporations continue to have undue influence in government (see a previous post Meat + Fowl Processing Plants), and local communities in the states they are located. FoodSafetyNews writes, that it is highly unlikely that JBS did not notice it had children employed at its processing plant(s).
- In a statement, Colorado-based JBS USA said it is launching its own “independent, third-party audit at all of our facilities to thoroughly evaluate this situation.” USA notes, “We take seriously the allegations against PSSI which, if true, represent a clear violation of our ethical policies,” the company said.
The Guardian reported that during FY 2022, there has been a 37% increase in child labor law violations all across the USA; with at least 688 children working in what are considered dangerous conditions. But despite these numbers, and warnings from the Department of Labor, Guardian wrote, republican lawmakers across the country have in recent months been pushing for the expansion of the types of approved work, as well as work hours.
Newsweek echoed this comment, republicans want to let children clean meat packing plants. But they write the republicans, backed by large well-funded business, are now just being more “brazen.” In addition to flinging open the door to child employment, some state legislatures in republican states want children to be able to work in hazardous jobs like mining, logging, and animal slaughtering, under a so-called “work study” provision. For instance, the Iowa legislators would expand the ability of child labor, while also protecting those companies from liability in cases of injury or death at the workplace.
Time quotes Director and Professor Kate Bronfenbrenner, that she believes that the increase in child labor is related to the impunity with which big corporations operate in today’s economy. Basically, the implication is that these wealthy agricultural companies have so much money, they consider it cheaper to do what they want, and pay the fines, than to stop the bad acting. Fines which the legislature sets on the low side.
The politics surrounding this is also related to government stopping the temporary immigration of workers who are willing to work in the hard industries, such as agriculture, and specifically meat processing places. The fear of letting immigrants “take our jobs,” is totally false as we can tell by the many open positions in agriculture: restaurants (where everyone wants to be the chef, but not the dishwasher), processing plants, fast food workers, field workers, and so on.
FoodAndSafety notes, food and agriculture are among the sectors of the economy experiencing labor shortages. So one can only wonder if companies are pulling at children because they can no longer find willing and able bodies of immigrants to work in these areas.
Child Labor to Child Trafficking?
SHRM reports that the Department of Labor cannot comment on whether the children were undocumented immigrants or whether they were subject to human trafficking, said DOL Wage and Hour Regional Administrator Michael Lazzeri in Chicago. Mainly they seem to remain quiet on this matter because this is not their area of jurisdiction.
FoodDive however, reports that Homeland Security is probing JBS and potential child trafficking at its slaughterhouses. This report was confirmed by NBC news, who also clarified that the Labor Department’s investigation may have first began in August 2022, but claims that PSSI used child labor at meat plants actually dates back to 2016.
All I can tell is that this is not over, the investigation is ongoing.
The PSSI Company Owners
The Blackstone Group, a private equity firm, acquired PSSI in 2018, and knew back in April 2022 of this situation according to Private Equity Stakeholder Project. PSSI was apparently standing out among its peers as a dangerous place to work:
- 6 people died from a nitrogen leak in 2021
- In 2017 it had the highest number of serious injury reports compared to number of employees
- Have paid thousand’s of dollars in OSHA fines for severe occupational accidents
In general, paraphrasing PEStakeHolder, private equity firms do not have a good reputation among labor rights activists, or ethical investors. They often load the acquired companies with debt. So as they focus on growing cash flow, the debt often “forces them” to push for reduced wages, reduced benefits, and reduced staffing levels at their acquired companies. Which often endangers employees and pushes management into making unsafe decision, in my opinion.
The Flip Side
Here is the flip side of this issue, assuming the family was not coerced and the child was not trafficked, then one can only assume that the child was working because the family needed the money.
When I was younger, ~7 years of age, I helped in the agricultural fields (driving tractors, picking potatoes, gathering eggs, milking cows, etc.), later, at age ~9 I would pick summer berries (blueberries + strawberries picking) to make the money necessary to buy the following year’s school supplies, and some new clothes. At 11 I also babysat, and did ironing for others during the school year to help the family with groceries. But never did my mother allow me to work so hard that it would interfere with my education, as she firmly believed that was the only way out of poverty.
So some say we should expand the ability of children to work so that they can help in this kind of situation. My counter is why? I can understand a family farm needing “all hands on deck” for planting and harvest, but without education their children’s future is limited. It seems like more support for those families should be considered, instead of putting the responsibilities on the backs of children.
But more than education, child labor causes harm directly to the child, their family, the community at large, and eventually the nation (3).
- Child labor can result in extreme bodily and mental harm, and even death.
- It can play a significant part in slavery, and sexual or economic exploitation.
- Child labor compounds what already is dire social inequality and discrimination.
- It removes children from education and health care, restricting fundamental rights and threatening their futures.
- Child labor leads to adverse health outcomes, such as: poor growth, malnutrition, higher infectious and system-specific diseases, behavioral and emotional disorders, and decreased coping efficacy (4).
As many have noted, to date, there is no international agreement to fully enforce a unified child labor policy (5). And from my reading of the news, I am concerned that this story is just a blip in the agriculture-based companies “business as usual” mindset and will not change the course of hiring children.
—Patty
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Explanation behind expanded new stories: I am trying to provide more depth on agricultural, food-related topics when they pop up in the news. What they often miss are the behind the stories details that can put the reported news into perspective. Hopefully this expansion on these stories helps you, as much as it helps me understand the bigger context.
