MINNEAPOLIS — One of the nation’s biggest cleansing services for food processing business utilized more than 100 kids in harmful tasks at 13 meatpacking plants throughout the nation, the U.S. Department of Labor stated Friday as it revealed over $1.5 million in civil charges.
The examination into Packers Sanitation Services Inc., or PSSI, started last summerseason. Department authorities browsed 3 meatpacking plants owned by JBS USA and Turkey Valley Farms in Nebraska and Minnesota, and discovered 31 underage employees as young as13 They likewise browsed PSSI’s headoffice in Kieler, Wisconsin. Underage employees were discovered at plants in 8 states.
The department went on to evaluation records for 55 places where PSSI supplied cleansing services and discovered even more offenses, including kids ages 13 to17 The firm gotten a short-term limiting order in November and a long-term injunction in December, when PSSI wentinto into a approval judgment that dedicated the business to no longer use minors unlawfully.
Over the past 3 years, kids were discovered to be utilizing caustic cleansing chemicals and cleansing “dangerous power-driven devices, like skull-splitters and razor-sharp bone saws,” Jessica Looman, principal deputy administrator of the department’s Wage and Hour Division, informed pressreporters.
At least 3 of those minors, consistingof a 13-year-old, suffered burns from the chemicals utilized for cleansing at the JBS plant in Grand Island, Nebraska, authorities stated.
Some of the kids worked overnight shifts and were likewise registered in schools throughout the day, department spokesperson Rhonda Burke stated in an e-mail.
The fine PSSI paid on Thursday, $15,138 for each small, is the optimum allo