A federal investigation last year discovered that a major meatpacking sanitation cleaning company with a reputation for hiring illegal aliens had employed more than 100 children in physically taxing jobs involving toxic chemicals and dangerous machinery. A punishment was handed down this month: a slap on the wrist with a feather.
Packers Sanitation Services Inc. “employed at least 102 children – from 13 to 17 years of age – in hazardous occupations and had them working overnight shifts at 13 meat processing facilities in eight states,” a statement from the Department of Labor reads. “[C]hildren were working with hazardous chemicals and cleaning meat processing equipment including back saws, brisket saws and head splitters. Investigators learned at least three minors suffered injuries while working for PSSI.”
‘The Company Ignored the Flags’
The federal probe revealed that the company deliberately tried to conceal its use of underaged labor.
“Our investigation found Packers Sanitation Services’ systems flagged some young workers as minors, but the company ignored the flags,” the Labor Department release continued. “‘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,’ said Wage and Hour Regional Administrator Michael Lazzeri in Chicago.”
The US government wants you to know that it takes such callous disregard for young human life very seriously.
“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,” Labor Dept. Principal Deputy Administrator of the Wage and Hour Division Jessica Looman is quoted as saying. “These children should never have been employed in meat packing plants and this can only happen when employers do not take responsibility to prevent child labor violations from occurring in the first place.”
And just what is the going reprimand for “systemic,” “corporate-wide failure” that abuses children in the American workplace today? The federal office explained its formula:
“Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, the department assessed PSSI $15,138 for each minor-aged employee who was employed in violation of the law. The amount is the maximum civil money penalty allowed by federal law….
“On Feb. 16, 2023, PSSI paid $1.5 million in civil money penalties.”
Crunching the Numbers: Hiring Illegal Aliens Pays
(Photo by Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images)
The Labor Department is in effect encouraging Packers Sanitation to continue its pernicious employment practices. As Liberty Nation noted in covering this topic last November, Packers Sanitation is a highly successful company. “Packers brings in more than $800 million a year in revenue,” Bloomberg noted in a 2017 report that spotlighted the frighteningly high rate of grave injury among the corporation’s workforce.
“The Blackstone-owned company provides cleaning services under contract to some of the nation’s largest meat and poultry producers, serving over 725 food processing plants,” news site Quartz writes.
Blackstone is one of the largest private equity firms in the world with total assets under management reported to be $880.9 billion. A $1.5 million fine for the speculative investment goliath via its lucrative sanitation cleaning property is beyond meaningless.
The news will likely amount to another public relations black eye for US big business, which has seen its reputation plummet among Americans in recent years. The toothless sanction provides further fuel for critics who decry private equity’s seemingly single-minded devotion to profits at the expense of all else and again displays the ugliness behind the slogan promulgated by those who defend hiring illegal aliens. “The jobs Americans won’t do” are so physically demanding, toxic, and life-threatening that foreign teenagers must be found to do them instead.
The federal government admits the problem of child labor is getting worse.
Labor Department official Looman “said the Wage and Hour Division has seen around a 50% increase in child labor violations since 2018,” Fox Business reports. “The violations include minors working more hours than permitted in legal jobs, using equipment they shouldn’t be while doing legal jobs, and working in places where they shouldn’t be employed in the first place.” It is clear what is driving the heinous trend.
For decades, astute observers have warned that massive unchecked illegal immigration would lead to a devaluation of the American worker and a gruesome coarsening of the labor environment. It’s hard to come up with a more shocking example of the corrosion than a 13-year-old kid being burned by caustic chemicals while working the graveyard shift.
