Feds fined a cleaning company $171,000 because they found 11 kids working a “dangerous” overnight shift at a meat processing plant in Iowa.
In a statement, the U.S. Labor Department said that the kids were working at the Seaboard Triumph Foods pork plant in Sioux City, Iowa, for the sanitation company Qvest LLC.
The kids helped “use corrosive cleaners to clean head splitters, jaw pullers, bandsaws, neck clippers, and other equipment at the Seaboard Triumph Foods facility from at least September 2019 through September 2023,” it said.
It is against the law in the United States for anyone younger than 18 to work in meat processing. A court document in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Iowa says that Qvest must pay the fine and not use “oppressive child labor.”
Qvest, which is based in Oklahoma, did not answer right away when asked for a statement.
In a letter to NBC News, Seaboard Triumph Foods said that it had not been accused of any wrongdoing, that it did not allow any vendor to use child labor, and that it “had no evidence that under individuals accessed the plant.” It also said that it hasn’t used Qvest’s services in over a year.
Qvest must also hire a third-party company to review its policies on hiring children within 90 days. It must also set up a way for people to report the illegal hiring of children, such as a toll-free number.
This is the second time a contractor has been caught using kids at the same facility. In May, Fayette Janitorial Services LLC agreed to pay almost $650,000 for using about twenty kids at the Sioux City plant and a Virginia Perdue Farms plant.
In May, Fayette said it would no longer hire minors. After the May review, both Seaboard and Perdue Farms ended their contracts with Fayette.
“These results show that Seaboard Triumph Foods has had children working illegally in their Sioux City plant since at least September 2019.” “Children continued to work in dangerous jobs at this facility even after the sanitation contractors were changed,” said Michael Lazzeri, wage and hour Midwest regional administrator.
The department said that the Wage and Hour Division found work violations involving more than 4,000 children in the 2024 fiscal year. These violations were found in 736 cases and led to fines of more than $15 million, which is 89% more than the previous year.
In a statement, Paul DeCamp, who used to be head of the Wage and Hour Division and is now a lawyer for Seaboard Triumph, said that companies were being “victimized” by fake workers getting jobs with fake documents.
“This situation underscores the problems facing employers throughout the country: individuals, including minors, obtaining jobs through their use of fraudulent identification documents, which are sophisticated enough to fool even the federal government’s E-Verify system,” he added.
A yearlong NBC News study into children working in slaughterhouses showed that kids have been hired to work in slaughterhouses and other places that process meat. The show told the story of Duvan Pérez, 16, who died when he got stuck in machinery after getting the job by using the ID of a man who was 32 years old.
