LINCOLN, Neb. – A contractor has been accused in federal court of illegally hiring teenagers, at least one only 13, to work at disgusting and dangerous overnight shifts scouring slaughterhouse production lines. The kids were hired at plants at Marshall and Worthington in southwest Minnesota and at Grand Island in Nebraska. Named on the complaint was Packers Sanitation Services, whose headquarters ia near Dubuque Iowa, at Kieler, Wisconsin. Because PSS operates in 400 locations nationwide, there is reason to believe its practice of employing child labor is occurring throughout the country, the U.S. Labor Department alleged.
Child labor charges
The U.S. Labor Department accused PSS of employing at least 31 children to clean equipment at three Midwestern meatpacking plants. The suit alleges these among specifics:
> A 13-year-old was burned by caustic cleaning chemicals.
> A 14-year-old was similarly burned and fell asleep in class the next day.
> A 15-year-old was assigned to clean the kill floor at a pork plant.
Two of the plants identified in the suit in Worthington and Grand Island. are operated by Brazilian-owned JBS, the largest meat processor the world, The third plant is grower-owned Turkey Valley Farms in Marshall.
Overnight clean-up crew. This is inside a JBS meat-packing plant in Worthington, where underage workers, some barely in their teens, were puy to work cleaning blood, guts and slop, sometimes with dangerous solvents. The federal charges read like passages from Upton Sinclair’s 1906 book “The Jungle,” which led to early federal reforms to prevent worker abuse in slaughterhouses. Many of the kids, investigators said, were immigrants’ children who had to be interviewed in Spanish.