Homeland Security takes a deeper look at possible human trafficking of under-age workers to slaughterhouses

A child cleans a slaughterhouse for PSSI; the subject
was blurred by the source. (Department of Labor photo)

"Last month, the Labor Department found that Packers Sanitation Services Inc. . . . employed 102 children at 13 slaughterhouses across eight states," reports Julia Ainsley and Laura Strickler of NBC News. Now, "The Department of Homeland Security has widened its investigation into migrant children found cleaning slaughterhouses and is now working with the Justice Department to examine whether a human smuggling scheme brought migrant children to work in multiple slaughterhouses for multiple companies across multiple states, according to two U.S. officials familiar with the investigation."

The investigation is looking into "how Central American children, some as young as 13, wound up working dangerous jobs that are legal only for American adults by presenting identification stolen from U.S. citizens," NBC reports. "So far the investigation is focused on smugglers who may have provided the children with false identities and possibly led them to dangerous jobs. The companies themselves are not targets of the investigation, the officials said."

A former Packers Sanitation Services manager, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told NBC, "In this industry you have a lot of people who are undocumented workers. A lot of times it’s because they’re not going to pay well enough to hire people in America who want to do it." NBC reports, "The former manager confirmed that the company uses the federal government’s E-Verify program, but said that while some employees presenting false documents were turned away, it was common for workers who presented obviously false IDs to get hired as long as the documents stated they were legal and of age."

Packers Sanitation spokesperson Gina Swenson disputed the former manager, saying, "This is categorically false — period. We have been crystal clear that we do not want a single person under the age of 18 working for the company. We have trained and retrained our hiring employees on how to actively spot identity theft — as part of our extensive efforts to enforce this absolute prohibition against employing anyone under the age of 18."

Slaughterhouse cleaners on graveyard shifts, many of them immigrants, are in a dangerous job with little oversight

Injury rates for workers in meatpacking plants are at an all-time low, according to the North American Meat Institute. But those numbers may be misleading, because plants commonly hire contractors to do the often-dangerous work of cleaning the plants at night, and they aren't required to report numbers on contractor injuries, Peter Waldman and Kartikay Mehrotra report for Bloomberg.

Meatpacking plants have a hard time filling even daytime production jobs; finding workers for the graveyard sanitation shift is even harder, which is why the larger plants often hire third parties to clean. These companies, like Packers Sanitation Services Inc., are cost-effective for the plants because they pay their mostly immigrant workforce a third less than what day shift meatpackers earn.

"Such is the genius of American outsourcing. In an era of heightened concern about food safety, meat and poultry producers are happy to pay sanitation companies for their expertise. The sanitation companies also assume the headaches and risk of staffing positions that only the destitute or desperate will take—very often undocumented immigrants," Bloomberg reports. "And they relieve the big producers, including household names such as Tyson and Pilgrim’s Pride Corp., of responsibility for one of the most dangerous factory jobs in America."

The immigrant workers, many undocumented, are pressured to complete work quickly, and accidents happen. But the immigrant workers rarely receive legal compensation after being injured.

"Judging from Packers’s record, the nightly storm of high-­pressure hoses, chemical vapors, blood, grease, and frantic deadlines, all swirling in clouds of steam around pulsing belts, blades, and blenders, can be treacherous. From 2015 through September 2016, Packers had the 14th-highest number of severe injuries—defined as an amputation, hospitalization, or the loss of an eye—among the 14,000 companies tracked by OSHA in 29 states, according to data analyzed by the National Employment Law Project," Bloomberg reports. Packers had the most injuries per worker by a wide margin, "with a rate of 14 severe injuries for every 10,000 workers. Its amputation rate of 9.4 dismemberments per 10,000 workers was almost five times higher than for U.S. manufacturing workers as a whole in 2015."

Labor Dept. accuses big meatpacking sanitation firm of illegally employing children as overnight workers

Worker using a high-powered hose to clean
meatpacking equipment. (Labor Department photo)

A Labor Department investigation found that “One of the largest food safety companies in the United States illegally employed more than two dozen children in at least three meatpacking plants, several of whom suffered chemical burns from the corrosive cleaners they were required to use,” reports Remy Tumin of The New York Times.

The department said at least 31 children aged 13 to 17 were employed as overnight meatpacking cleaning staff by Packers Sanitation Services “in hazardous occupations. The jobs performed by children included cleaning dangerous powered equipment during overnight shifts."

Tumin reports, "Their jobs included cleaning kill floors, meat- and bone-cutting saws, grinding machines and electric knives, according to court documents. The mix of boys and girls were not fluent English speakers and were interviewed mostly in Spanish."

Packers Sanitation Services is based in Kieler, Wis., and contracts with at least 700 facilities and employee over 17,000 people nationwide, its website says.

The department got an injunction from a federal judge in Nebraska requiring the company to stop “employing oppressive child labor” and to comply with the Labor Department investigation.

The company says it has cooperated, and denies any child-labor violations. It “has an absolute company-wide prohibition against the employment of anyone under the age of 18 and zero tolerance for any violation of that policy — period,” it said in a statement.

Slaughterhouse-cleaning firm paid $1.5 million in fines after feds found minors using chemicals to clean equipment

Department of Labor map

In the fall of 2022, the Labor Department got an injunction from a federal judge in Nebraska requiring Packer Sanitation Services Inc. to stop 'employing oppressive child labor' and to comply with the department's investigation of the firm.

The department has now ended its inquiry saying it found "102 children as young as 13 working hazardous overnight jobs cleaning slaughterhouses in eight states in what it called a 'corporate-wide failure” by one of the largest food sanitation companies in the country," report Laura Strickler and Julia Ainsley of NBC News. "The Labor Department says the children who were working overnight shifts used 'caustic chemicals to clean razor-sharp saws."

Michael Lazzeri, regional administrator for the division in Chicago, told NBC, “Our investigation found Packers Sanitation Services’ systems flagged some young workers as minors, but the company ignored the flags. When the Wage and Hour Division arrived with warrants, the adults — who had recruited, hired and supervised these children — tried to derail our efforts to investigate their employment practices.”     

PSSI has paid a $1.5 million fine for the violations, "dictated by the Fair Labor Standards Act, which allows a penalty of $15,138 for each minor who was employed in violation of the law, according to the Labor Department," NBC explains. "Advocates and lawyers for the children say some of the child workers for PSSI were unaccompanied minors who recently came across the southern border. . . . The company signed a consent decree in December with the Labor Department and agreed to abide by child labor laws after federal investigators documented 50 children working at slaughterhouses for it."

The company issued a statement: "We are pleased to have finalized this settlement figure as part of our previously announced December resolution with the DOL that ends their inquiry. We have been crystal clear from the start: Our company has a zero-tolerance policy against employing anyone under the age of 18 and fully shares the DOL’s objective of ensuring full compliance at all locations."

The company is based in Kieler, Wiscomsin, and contracts with at least 700 facilities and employee over 17,000 people nationwide, its website says.

Meatpacking roundup: Packers get lower pay despite higher risk; OSHA fines companies nearly $1M after plant deaths

Here's a one-two about the meatpacking industry: 

"Several poultry processing companies operating a Gainesville, Ga., plant are facing nearly $1 million in fines from the Occupational Health and Safety Administration after a liquid nitrogen leak caused the death of six workers and injured dozens more," Ximena Bustillo reports for Politico's Weekly Agriculture. "The federal workplace safety watchdog on Friday said that Foundation Food Group, Messer LLC, Packers Sanitation Services Inc. and FS Group Inc. 'failed to implement any of the safety procedures necessary to prevent the nitrogen leak,' and didn't provide workers with training or equipment 'that could have saved their lives.'"

The workers died of asphyxiation after entering a room in the plant with a malfunctioning freezer that leaked liquid nitrogen into the air. "The agency wants the companies to pay $998,637 for 59 violations of worker safety rules," Bustillo reports.

Average meatpacking worker hourly wage by state, May 2020.
Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting map; click image to enlarge, or here for interactive version.

Meatpacking workers experience higher illness and injury rates compared with other manufacturing jobs, but their average wage is lower than the average wage for all manufacturing employees," Eli Hoff reports for the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting.

According to newly released data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average meatpacking worker was paid an average hourly wage of $15.53 in May 2020. The average wage for all manufacturing employees was $20.08 an hour, Hoff reports.