Fayette Janitorial Service LLC agreed to pay nearly $650,000 in civil penalties and the court-ordered mandate that it no longer employs minors.

A Tennessee-based sanitation company has agreed to pay more than half a million dollars after a federal investigation found it illegally hired at least two dozen children to clean dangerous meat processing facilities in Iowa and Virginia.

The U.S. Department of Labor announced Monday that Fayette Janitorial Service LLC entered into a consent judgment, in which the company agrees to nearly $650,000 in civil penalties and the court-ordered mandate that it no longer employs minors. The February filing indicated federal investigators believed at least four children had still been working at one Iowa slaughterhouse as of Dec. 12.

U.S. law prohibits companies from employing people younger than 18 to work in meat processing plants because of the hazards.

  • ohlaph@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    A fine is merely the cost of doing business.

    If we want change, there needs to be jail time.

    • Tryptaminev@lemm.ee
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      7 months ago

      I’d say one day for each hour of child labour for everyone who was involved in facilitating it, or had oversight responsibilities.

    • Astongt615@lemmy.one
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      7 months ago

      And yet in the same breath we often point out that prison time doesn’t rehabilitate (think petty crime). I think realistic fines to individuals AND companies that are more than “cost of doing business,” as well as blacklisting the (undoubtedly several) individals responsible from being able to hold that level of power in an industry, not just the company, then there may be a reasonable deterrent, and it won’t be a languishing burden on tax payers to put these guys up in dressed up 4 star hotels.

      • barsquid@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        People deliberately putting children’s lives at risk should be jailed the same whether or not they are doing it from hiding behind a limited liability. And also the prisons should be changed so that they are actually about rehabilitation.

    • john89@lemmy.ca
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      7 months ago

      Bad idea. Just increase the fines so they outweigh any potential savings the business may have received.

      Hit them where it hurts, in their wallets.

            • john89@lemmy.ca
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              7 months ago

              From a better solution that actually improves the lives of people.

              He’s just advocating for revenge. It doesn’t solve anything.

              Let me say it again for the people in the back: it’s better to redistribute these people’s wealth than to throw them in prison without redistributing their wealth.

              Try not to distract from the problem at hand.