A Tennessee cleaning contractor has been fined more than $600,000 by the Department of Labor after allegedly hiring children to clean slaughterhouses.
Fayette Janitorial Service LLC, which is headquartered in Somerville and operates as Fayette Industrial, must pay $649,304 in civil money penalties and hire a third party to review and implement company policies aimed at preventing the future employment of children in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), according to a statement issued by the department on May 6.
It must also set up a program for reporting concerns about the illegal employment of children.
The consent order and judgment were approved in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Iowa.
It comes after federal investigators with the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division found Fayette had fired at least 24 children—some of whom were as young as 13 years old—to work on overnight sanitation shifts at two separate slaughtering and meat packing facilities: Seaboard Triumph Foods LLC in Sioux City, Iowa, and Perdue Farms in Accomac, Virginia.
“Minors were used to clean dangerous kill floor equipment such as head splitters, jaw pullers, meat bandsaws, and neck clippers,” the Labor Department said in a February news release announcing the findings of its investigation.
At least one 14-year-old was severely injured while cleaning the drumstick packing line belt at the plant in Virginia, federal investigators alleged.
Minors ‘Exploited, Endangered’
Under the consent order and judgment announced on May 6, Fayette must hire a third-party consultant or compliance specialist within 90 days, according to the Labor Department.The third-party hiree must have “knowledge and experience in complying with the FLSA’s child labor provisions,” and must review Fayette’s policies immediately, provide training at all of its facilities, and audit its compliance for at least three years, the department stated.
The cleaning contractor must also ensure that it maintains accurate records of all employees, including their dates of birth and the work tasks that they have been assigned, and ensure disciplinary “sanctions” are taken against any management or senior staff members who are responsible for child labor violations after the date of the consent judgment, according to the Labor Department. Such sanctions include terminating job roles and suspending staff members, it stated.
In addition, Fayette must set up a toll-free hotline where people can receive information and report child labor compliance concerns anonymously.
In a statement announcing the penalties, the Labor Department stated that it is “determined to stop our nation’s children from being exploited and endangered in jobs they should never have been near.”
Regional Solicitor Christine Heri pointed to the passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act, which includes provisions designed to prevent underage labor and improve safety, in 1938.
Thousands of Minors Employed Across US
Specifically, under the act, companies are prohibited from hiring people younger than 18 years old to work in certain jobs in meat processing plants and slaughtering houses, including operating or cleaning machinery, because of the hazardous conditions.Still, investigators found that more than 5,800 children had been employed in companies across the nation during the last fiscal year in violation of federal child labor laws, according to the Labor Department.
“Yet in 2024, we still find U.S. companies employing children in risky jobs, jeopardizing their safety for profit,” Ms. Heri said. “We are committed to using all strategies to stop and prevent unlawful child labor and holding all employers legally responsible for their actions.”
A spokesperson for Fayette told the Associated Press in February that the company was cooperating with the investigation and had a “zero-tolerance policy for minor labor.”
In a statement to CNN on May 6, Fayette appeared to blame “fraudulent” documents for the underage workers.
“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,” a company spokesperson said, adding that “substantial investments in proprietary systems and technologies has closed the gap that allowed this situation to arise.”
Fayette has cooperated with the Department of Labor throughout its investigation, the spokesperson said, and its goal remains to “ensure a safe and compliant work environment” for all of its employees.
