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.
A fine is merely the cost of doing business.
If we want change, there needs to be jail time.
I’d say one day for each hour of child labour for everyone who was involved in facilitating it, or had oversight responsibilities.
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.
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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.
The For-profit prison system is fucked, but that doesn’t mean jails in general are bad.
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.
Why is it bad?
It’s a distraction.
How so?
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.
And the executives are in jail? Right?
Oh, I can see how you might think that from having basic common sense. But actually, laws are only for poors.
Only if they didn’t give a cut to the regulators. This isn’t a fine. It’s payment so the regulators look the other way.
It’s cheaper for them to break the law and pay a “fine” then to go about things legitimately.
It’s the cost of doing business.
Capitalism at it’s finest.
That’s not all, folks! 🐷 This shit runs deep, this is merely the tip of the iceberg. I just can’t wrap my head around children being brought into these places, trained, and then let loose–and no adult along that chain thinks to themselves that maybe there’s a problem with that?!?!?!
From the article:
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One 14-year-old was severely injured while cleaning the drumstick packing line belt at the plant in Virginia, the investigation alleged.
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The agreement stipulates that Fayette will hire a third-party consultant to monitor the company’s compliance with child labor laws for at least three years, as well as to facilitate trainings. The company must also establish a hotline for individuals to report concerns about child labor abuses.
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The Labor Department’s latest statistics indicate the number of children being employed illegally in the U.S. has increased 88% since 2019.
This is all very performative, slap-on-the-wrist level punishment, and i imagine there are hundreds more children out there still working in shit conditions because nobody will say or do anything about it until more injuries/deaths force them to.
I wonder, also, how much that increase in children being employed illegally is them needing to in order to make ends meet at home due to corporate greedflation running rampant?
Like, yes, the companies shouldn’t hire the kids. But also, we should address why those kids are willing to work those jobs in the first place.
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It doesn’t specifically say who these children were, but they were likely migrants because the child labor issue is actually an immigration issue.
https://www.npr.org/2023/05/04/1173697113/immigrant-child-labor-crisis
It’s always immigrant kids. Nobody should be surprised that the companies that are willing to illegally employ immigrants are also willing to violate other labor laws.
Allow these people (the adults, not kids) to become legally employed and this problem will be drastically reduced.
I work for a top 50 by population city here in the US and they’re hiring illegals left and right. They do it by bringing them in through a temp agency and then transferring them over to our books after six months.
There is no such thing as an illegal person. A business may have illegal hiring practices, though.
Brought to you by these child labor profiteers
Looks about white
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No fine for Perdue or Seaboard Triumph Foods though even though the kids were even allowed in the plants. How could we possibly hold them liable for vetting outside contractors.
That’s the way it works. It’s a risk management and mitigation strategy for companies. You hiring contractors and offload the liability.
From what I understand, and IANAL(with the best of em) we’d have to change the laws to go after companies for their contractor’s liability/negligence.
I think you’d be able to go after Perdue or seaboard if you could prove they were grossly negligence or derelict or knowingly hired this contractorbecause they used kids.
But they can play that legal “plausible deniability” card otherwise.
Child labor laws are ruining this country! I started at the metal refinery when I was 9, and worked my way up to shift foreman by 12.
And they think an untrained minor will ever effectively clean food production compared to trained adult. Doesn’t matter that they are endangering a minor and giving people food poisoning, as long as it’s cheaper.
Effective? All that matters is profit, get out of here with that commie crap
Cost of doing business. Not going to slow anyone down.
Once Trump gets in, and the “Freedom to be Poor” bill is passed than these damn woke liberals won’t be able to limit these children’s rights like this!
We’ll pass Poe’s Law too.
“The children yearn for the mines” -some goofball
The money will be given to the children, right?
Sure will, money will go to Israel, they buy bombs, bombs find children therefore money being given to children!
i don’t know how they can call these places “meat processing plants”. they are slaughter houses. for slaughtering
Because people are detached from ethics and humanity as an intended function of capitalism. If people regarded animal welfare every time they needed to eat by being exposed to the slaughter, line might go down. Media is sanitized whatever degree maximizes potential consumer bases, and ultimately profits.
Interesting. I always pictured people in the meat packing business as having such high moral standards.
