As an investigator watched cleaners walk into a pork processing plant, she noticed something unusual: A few carried “pink and purple sparkly backpacks” as they entered the Sioux City, Iowa, facility around 11 p.m.
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That observation became evidence in a probe that now has led a Tennessee-based sanitation company to agree to pay nearly $650,000 in fines for hiring at least two dozen children to work overnight in slaughterhouses and meatpacking facilities. In at least one case, a child was seriously injured.
A federal judge on Monday approved a consent order finding that Fayette Janitorial Service LLC sent teens as young as 13 to scrub razor-edged machinery with high-powered hoses, scalding water and dangerous chemicals. The agreement requires Fayette Janitorial to hire a third-party consultant — who will be tasked with monitoring the company’s compliance with federal labor law — within 90 days. It also stipulates that the company must establish a toll-free hotline number for people to anonymously report possible child labor violations to the consultant.
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“As we’ve unfortunately seen in this case, employers’ violations of federal child labor laws have real consequences on children’s lives,” Jessica Looman, administrator of the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division, said in a news release announcing the probe. “Our actions to stop these violations will help ensure that more children are not hurt in the future.”
Fayette Janitorial CEO Matthew R. Armour said in a statement to The Washington Post that the company cooperated with the Department of Labor and has invested in technologies that have “closed the gap that allowed this situation to arise.”
“The realization that the use of fraudulent identification documents had allowed individuals under the age of 18 to circumvent our policies and procedures required immediate action,” Armour said, adding: “Our goal remains to ensure a safe and compliant work environment for all of our employees.”
The crackdown on the company comes amid a surge of high-profile cases involving children — mostly migrants — working in some of the nation’s most dangerous industries. Federal law has for nearly a century barred anyone under 18 from holding “particular hazardous” or “detrimental” occupations — including operating or cleaning the machines found inside meat and poultry processing plants.
Despite this ban, the Labor Department has recorded an 88 percent increase in children being employed illegally since 2019. In fiscal 2023, a year marked by a Republican-led push to relax child labor protections, the agency found that nearly 5,800 children had been illegally hired.
“Children in hazardous occupations drove the Fair Labor Standards Act’s passage in 1938,” Christine Heri, an attorney with the Labor Department, said in a news release Monday. “Yet in 2024, we still find U.S. companies employing children in risky jobs, jeopardizing their safety for profit.”
The investigation into Fayette Janitorial’s “use of oppressive child labor” began in October, according to a complaint filed by the Labor Department in February. Investigators spent weeks surveilling a Seaboard Triumph Foods facility in Iowa and a Perdue Farms plant in Virginia and interviewing workers — dozens of whom appeared to be younger than 18, court documents state.
The children’s youthful features and small sizes made them easy to spot — as did one worker’s shirt that said, “Class of 2025 South Sioux City High School,” according to the complaint. Though some of the workers claimed to be adults, investigators were able to match their photos with school records.
At Seaboard Triumph Foods, a 16-year-old worker who had been employed there for two years told investigators he worked as many as 54 hours each week cleaning a machine “that cuts the hogs’ ears.” His shifts began late at night and stretched into the early morning, even while school was in session, according to the complaint.
Inside the Perdue plant, which processes about 1.5 million chickens per week, investigators said at least 15 children were hired by Fayette Janitorial to sanitize similarly dangerous machinery. One child’s arm was mangled in February 2022 while he cleaned debris from a conveyor belt used to pack chicken drumsticks, the complaint says. The 13-year-old, identified as Minor Child J, was hospitalized for 12 days and missed school for months, investigators wrote.
In September, more than a year after the incident, Fayette Janitorial informed Perdue that a worker had been hospitalized, and it “admitted in the email … that it was notified that Minor Child J was a child in May 2022,” the complaint says.
“Despite knowing this, Fayette continued to employ Minor Child J past May 2022 and other minor children at the Perdue Facility,” investigators wrote.
A spokeswoman for Perdue said in a statement to The Post that the company terminated its contract with Fayette this year and “strengthened the screening and monitoring process for all our third-party contractors.”
“Underage labor has no place in our business or industry,” wrote Andrea Staub, Perdue’s senior vice president of corporate communications. “It is unacceptable and runs counter to our values as a 104-year-old, family-owned company. Perdue has strong safeguards in place to ensure that all associates are legally eligible to work in our facilities — and we expect the same of our vendors.”
Seaboard Triumph Foods also said it has severed ties with Fayette, which provides contract sanitation and cleaning services for meat and poultry processing facilities in more than 30 states, according to the Labor Department.
“Every employer has a legal and moral obligation to make certain they are not employing children in dangerous jobs,” Michael Lazzeri, an administrator at the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division, said in a statement. “With this agreement, we are ensuring Fayette Janitorial Service takes immediate and significant steps to ensure they never put children in harm’s way again.”
Get a curated selection of 10 of our best stories in your inbox every weekend.
That observation became evidence in a probe that now has led a Tennessee-based sanitation company to agree to pay nearly $650,000 in fines for hiring at least two dozen children to work overnight in slaughterhouses and meatpacking facilities. In at least one case, a child was seriously injured.
A federal judge on Monday approved a consent order finding that Fayette Janitorial Service LLC sent teens as young as 13 to scrub razor-edged machinery with high-powered hoses, scalding water and dangerous chemicals. The agreement requires Fayette Janitorial to hire a third-party consultant — who will be tasked with monitoring the company’s compliance with federal labor law — within 90 days. It also stipulates that the company must establish a toll-free hotline number for people to anonymously report possible child labor violations to the consultant.
ADVERTISING
“As we’ve unfortunately seen in this case, employers’ violations of federal child labor laws have real consequences on children’s lives,” Jessica Looman, administrator of the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division, said in a news release announcing the probe. “Our actions to stop these violations will help ensure that more children are not hurt in the future.”
Fayette Janitorial CEO Matthew R. Armour said in a statement to The Washington Post that the company cooperated with the Department of Labor and has invested in technologies that have “closed the gap that allowed this situation to arise.”
“The realization that the use of fraudulent identification documents had allowed individuals under the age of 18 to circumvent our policies and procedures required immediate action,” Armour said, adding: “Our goal remains to ensure a safe and compliant work environment for all of our employees.”
The crackdown on the company comes amid a surge of high-profile cases involving children — mostly migrants — working in some of the nation’s most dangerous industries. Federal law has for nearly a century barred anyone under 18 from holding “particular hazardous” or “detrimental” occupations — including operating or cleaning the machines found inside meat and poultry processing plants.
Despite this ban, the Labor Department has recorded an 88 percent increase in children being employed illegally since 2019. In fiscal 2023, a year marked by a Republican-led push to relax child labor protections, the agency found that nearly 5,800 children had been illegally hired.
“Children in hazardous occupations drove the Fair Labor Standards Act’s passage in 1938,” Christine Heri, an attorney with the Labor Department, said in a news release Monday. “Yet in 2024, we still find U.S. companies employing children in risky jobs, jeopardizing their safety for profit.”
The investigation into Fayette Janitorial’s “use of oppressive child labor” began in October, according to a complaint filed by the Labor Department in February. Investigators spent weeks surveilling a Seaboard Triumph Foods facility in Iowa and a Perdue Farms plant in Virginia and interviewing workers — dozens of whom appeared to be younger than 18, court documents state.
The children’s youthful features and small sizes made them easy to spot — as did one worker’s shirt that said, “Class of 2025 South Sioux City High School,” according to the complaint. Though some of the workers claimed to be adults, investigators were able to match their photos with school records.
At Seaboard Triumph Foods, a 16-year-old worker who had been employed there for two years told investigators he worked as many as 54 hours each week cleaning a machine “that cuts the hogs’ ears.” His shifts began late at night and stretched into the early morning, even while school was in session, according to the complaint.
Inside the Perdue plant, which processes about 1.5 million chickens per week, investigators said at least 15 children were hired by Fayette Janitorial to sanitize similarly dangerous machinery. One child’s arm was mangled in February 2022 while he cleaned debris from a conveyor belt used to pack chicken drumsticks, the complaint says. The 13-year-old, identified as Minor Child J, was hospitalized for 12 days and missed school for months, investigators wrote.
In September, more than a year after the incident, Fayette Janitorial informed Perdue that a worker had been hospitalized, and it “admitted in the email … that it was notified that Minor Child J was a child in May 2022,” the complaint says.
“Despite knowing this, Fayette continued to employ Minor Child J past May 2022 and other minor children at the Perdue Facility,” investigators wrote.
A spokeswoman for Perdue said in a statement to The Post that the company terminated its contract with Fayette this year and “strengthened the screening and monitoring process for all our third-party contractors.”
“Underage labor has no place in our business or industry,” wrote Andrea Staub, Perdue’s senior vice president of corporate communications. “It is unacceptable and runs counter to our values as a 104-year-old, family-owned company. Perdue has strong safeguards in place to ensure that all associates are legally eligible to work in our facilities — and we expect the same of our vendors.”
Seaboard Triumph Foods also said it has severed ties with Fayette, which provides contract sanitation and cleaning services for meat and poultry processing facilities in more than 30 states, according to the Labor Department.
“Every employer has a legal and moral obligation to make certain they are not employing children in dangerous jobs,” Michael Lazzeri, an administrator at the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division, said in a statement. “With this agreement, we are ensuring Fayette Janitorial Service takes immediate and significant steps to ensure they never put children in harm’s way again.”
