Well this is, um, extremely alarming.
A leading sanitation company is accused of employing dozens of children to clean the killing floors of slaughterhouses during graveyard shifts, the Department of Labor announced.
Packers Sanitation Services, Inc., or PSSI, a company contracted to work at slaughterhouses and meatpacking facilities throughout the county, allegedly employed at least 31 kids — one as young as 13 — to work overnight cleaning shifts at three facilities in Nebraska and Minnesota, according to court documents filed on Wednesday.
Those practices would violate the Fair Labor Standards Act, which prohibits "oppressive child labor" and minors from working in any kind of hazardous employment, according to the complaint. The Department of Labor's Child Labor Regulations designates many roles in slaughterhouse and meatpacking facilities as hazardous for minors.
This is, if true, not good at all.
Have you ever seen a slaughterhouse?
Do you know what it takes to clean one?
Just in case it wasn't clear, investigators went very deep to get the facts straight here:
Labor department officials also subpoenaed school records, interviewed confidential sources — including minors who worked in the facilities — and conducted surveillance in which they allegedly saw minors entering the facilities to work night shifts as part of the investigation, the complaint stated.
The investigation found that minors cleaned the killing floors and various machines — including meat and bone cutting saws and a grinding machine — during the graveyard shifts, according to the complaint.
PSSI employed at least a dozen 17-year-olds across the three slaughterhouses, fourteen 16-year-olds, three 15-year-olds, one 14-year-old and one 13-year-old, the complaint said.
Interviews with the kids — which were conducted in Spanish, their first language, according to the complaint — revealed that several children began their shifts at the facilities at 11 p.m. and worked until 5, 6 or 7 a.m. Some worked up to six or seven days a week.
School records showed that one 14-year-old, who worked at the Grand Island facility from 11 p.m. to 5 a.m. five to six days a week, from December 2021 to this past April, fell asleep in class and missed school after suffering injuries from chemical burns. At least two other minors also suffered chemical burns, the complaint states.
