Nebraska's Meat Packing Scandal, Round 2

Well if they can’t get local kids to work those shifts, what are you supposed to do

 

The abuse of immigrant children in meatpacking plants isn't just limited to Nebraska.
Inquiry Finds Under-Age Workers at Meat Plant (Published 2008)
Exploitation and Abuse at the Chicken Plant

 

Not just meat packing plants, a car parts manufacturer in Alabama:
Children as young as 12 have been working at a Hyundai-owned factory in Alabama, report says

Tabatha Moultry, 39, a former SMART employee, told Reuters that the plant relied on migrant workers to keep up with high demand and remembered working with a migrant girl who "looked 11 or 12 years old."

"She was way too young to be working in that plant, or any plant," Moutry told Reuters.

Another former employee told Reuters that they were around 50 underaged workers working at the facility.

 

Then you had the Georgia Farm that was discovered last year … holding the immigrants on the farm with guns and electric fences, raping some, and making them work for Pennies at gunpoint…

Modern day slavery ring trapped hundreds of migrant workers in south Georgia | Daily Mail Online

 

and this is why neither party wants real immigration reform, the money behind the parties rely on being able to take advantage of illegal immigrants for cheap labor to increase their profits

 

Child Labor Has Made a Comeback

The latest child labor case to make headlines is shocking even if you’re jaded about what companies are capable of when it comes to their workers. Dozens of teenagers—including children as young as 13—allegedly worked overnight shifts cleaning dangerous equipment in Minnesota and Nebraska meatpacking plants.

The teens worked for Packers Sanitation Services, which was sued by the U.S. Department of Labor last week. Packers Sanitation is not a household name, but it’s an enormous corporation providing janitorial services for food companies that are nationally known; in this case, for meat industry powerhouses Turkey Valley Farms and JBS USA.

Owned by a succession of private equity firms (currently Blackstone), Packers Sanitation has a terrible workplace safety record; a 2017 study by the National Employment Law Project found that the company had the 14th-highest number of severe injury reports nationwide among 14,000 companies tracked by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Since 2018, OSHA has investigated at least four amputations and three fatalities among Packers Sanitation employees, including a decapitation. According to Bloomberg Businessweek, the company’s 2015 amputation rate (almost 10 dismemberments per 10,000 workers) was almost five times higher than for U.S. manufacturing workers overall. In short, this isn’t scooping ice cream at the neighborhood shop or lifeguarding at the town pool.

The court pleadings are heartbreaking. In one example, a 14-year-old worked through the night “cleaning machines ‘used to cut meat’ while attending Walnut Middle School.” A report cited in the lawsuit detailed this child “falling asleep in class and missing class as a result and suffering injuries from chemical burns.”

 

Low unemployment and no immigration makes companies desperate. No excuse but we should get more labor in the US.

 

BINGO! Republicans controlled Congress and the White House; and,.....did nothing. Democrats controlled Congress and the White House; and,....did nothing.

We need labor. Set up a guest-worker program so folks can live legally in the US, work with appropriate protections and end the charade. I am GatorFanCF and I approved this message.

 

Child workers found throughout Hyundai-Kia supply chain in Alabama

At least four major suppliers of Hyundai Motor Co and sister Kia Corp have employed child labor at Alabama factories in recent years, a Reuters investigation found, and state and federal agencies are probing whether kids have worked at as many as a half dozen additional manufacturers throughout the automakers’ supply chain in the southern U.S. state.

At a plant owned by Hwashin America Corp, a supplier to the two car brands in the south Alabama town of Greenville, a 14-year-old Guatemalan girl worked this May assembling auto body components, according to interviews with her father and law enforcement officials. At plants owned by Korean auto-parts maker Ajin Industrial Co, in the east Alabama town of Cusseta, a former production engineer told Reuters he worked with at least 10 minors. And six other ex-employees of Ajin said they, too, worked alongside multiple underage laborers.

In two separate statements sent by the same public relations firm, Hwashin and Ajin said their policies forbid the hiring of any worker not of legally employable age. Using identical language, both companies said they hadn’t, “to the best of our knowledge,” hired underage workers.

The employment of children at Hwashin and Ajin hasn’t been previously reported. The news follows a Reuters report in July that revealed the use of child workers, one as young as 12, by SMART Alabama LLC, a Hyundai subsidiary in the south Alabama town of Luverne. In August, the U.S. Department of Labor said that SL Alabama LLC, another Hyundai supplier and a unit of South Korea’s SL Corp, employed underage workers, including a 13-year-old, at its factory in Alexander City.

 

DHS investigating possible human trafficking of kids who cleaned slaughterhouses

Federal investigators are looking into whether 50 children — some as young as 13 — who were allegedly illegally employed cleaning Midwestern slaughterhouses were victims of labor trafficking, three officials from the Department of Homeland Security told NBC News.

Homeland Security Investigations agents have interviewed children who worked cleaning a JBS Foods slaughterhouse in Grand Island, Nebraska, the officials say.

There is no indication DHS is investigating the company that hired the children, Packers Sanitation Services Inc., or PSSI, for human trafficking. Instead, said two DHS officials, DHS is investigating to rule out the possibility that outside traffickers may have forced children to work for PSSI and profited off their labor.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/02/17/child-labor-meatpacking-department-of-labor/

One of the country’s largest food sanitation service providers has paid $1.5 million in penalties for illegally employing at least 102 children to clean 13 meatpacking plants on overnight shifts, the Labor Department announced Friday.

The company, Packers Sanitation Services, allegedly employed minors as young as 13 to use dangerous chemicals to clean “razor-sharp saws,” head splitters and other high-risk equipment at meatpacking facilities in eight states, mostly in the Midwest and the South. The plants are operated by some of the country’s most powerful meat and poultry producers, including JBS Foods, Tyson and Cargill. Those companies were not charged or fined.

Investigators learned in recent months that at least three children suffered injuries, including a chemical burn to the face, while cleaning slaughterhouses in the middle of the night.

“The child labor violations in this case were systemic and reached across eight states, and clearly indicate a corporate-wide failure by Packers Sanitation Services at all levels,” said Jessica Looman, principal deputy administrator of the Labor Department’s wage and hour division, in a statement. “These children should never have been employed in meat packing plants and this can only happen when employers do no take responsibility to prevent child labor violations from occurring in the first place.”

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/03/08/huckabee-sanders-arkansas-child-labor/

Sanders believes the provision was “burdensome and obsolete,” spokeswoman Alexa Henning said in an emailed statement. Remaining state and federal regulations are still in effect, she said. Sanders signed the Republican-backed bill on Tuesday.

Federal officials have pledged to crack down on child labor law offenses after regulators discovered hundreds of violations in meatpacking plants and after press reports emerged of children working in hazardous occupations around the country.

The Labor Department fined Packers Sanitation Services, a subcontractor for meatpacking plants, $1.5 million in February for illegally hiring children, some of whom sustained chemical burns after working with caustic cleaning agents.

Other states are also considering loosening child labor protections. A bill advancing in Iowa would allow 14- and 15-year-olds to work certain jobs in meatpacking plants and would shield businesses from civil liability if a youth worker is sickened, injured or killed on the job.

 

Imagine having a company with revenue in the hundreds of millions yearly having to pay a one time $1.5M fine for systemic behavior that took place over many years!! And no penalties for any individuals running that show. Couple that with your other post about how they have committed to drastic moves such as following laws.

Man, what a colossal slap-down of these people! That $1.5M cost to save and make that same amount many times over and then result in absolutely no personal accountability is a screeching lesson to all!!

 

Opinion: Suddenly the U.S. is facing a problem we thought we'd solved: Rampant child labor

The push to ease child labor regulations comes at a terrible time because U.S. schoolchildren moved backward academically during the pandemic. Many studies have found that students who work 20 or more hours a week are more likely to drop out of school and have their grades decline, not to mention that they’re often too exhausted to do schoolwork or stay awake in class.

Dropping out can lead to worse economic prospects. High school dropouts had median weekly earnings of just $626 in 2021, 23% below the $809 earned by high school graduates (without college). Workers with a bachelor’s degree earn $1,334 a week, more than double what high school dropouts earn.

All this speaks to the need to maintain child labor laws and step up enforcement. Unfortunately the move to ease such laws — an effort long backed by the libertarian Koch brothers and their network — sends a strong message to employers that hiring young teens is just fine. These legislative moves could further embolden employers to flout child labor regulations.

 

School on Zoom for a few months: Abject terrorism for all kids, set the country on the path to destruction within half a decade, kids' DNA essentially changed to an alien race with the sole goal of eradicating all decent and above humans.

16 year-olds serving Jaeger Bombs in bars 4 hours a night on school days: Simple family values common sense.

 

Kids could fill labor shortages, even in bars, if these lawmakers succeed

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Lawmakers in several states are embracing legislation to let children work in more hazardous occupations, for more hours on school nights and in expanded roles, including serving alcohol in bars and restaurants as young as 14.

The efforts to significantly roll back labor rules are largely led by Republican lawmakers to address worker shortages and, in some cases, run afoul of federal regulations.

Child welfare advocates worry the measures represent a coordinated push to scale back hard-won protections for minors.