A child labor crisis is unfolding at JBS USA meatpacking plants, including the one in Worthington, Minnesota. News outlets such as Minnesota Public Radio have recently reported that minors have been found working the midnight shift at JBS in the employment of Packer Sanitation Services, Inc.
Packer Sanitation Services, Inc., also known as PSSI, is based in Kieler, Wisconsin, and has cleaning contracts with hundreds of food processing plants across the country.
Rather than obscure its mission as a clean-up company that also offers services such as pest control, PSSI’s website includes statements like this: “If you think cleaning is a menial job, you’ve never met us. What we do protects your people, your food supply, and ultimately, your brand.”
There is no mention on the PSSI website of the company’s alleged practice of illegally hiring minors to tackle such important-sounding work. Yet investigators from the U.S. Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division have been looking into the company’s hiring practices since August.
That’s when the government received a tip about the minors from Nebraska-based law enforcement agents. A subsequent examination by the U.S. Labor Department revealed many troubling instances of teenagers working the overnight shift in meat processing plants—and getting injured on the job while doing so.
In one case, a thirteen-year-old suffered third-degree burns while handling a caustic cleaning agent.
The Fair Labor Act of 1938 offers clear guidelines regarding workers under eighteen years old, including provisions against minors handling dangerous chemicals or equipment, such as meat grinders, or working past 7 p.m. during the school year. Nevertheless, illegal child labor is hardly a thing of the past.
In recent years, companies from Dunkin’ Donuts to McDonald’s and Wendy’s have been found guilty of thousands of violations involving minors working long hours or otherwise being put in unsupervised or unregulated work situations. In 2020, the Chipotle restaurant chain agreed to pay more than $1 million in fines due to child labor violations involving 13,000 young workers.
What is $1 million, though, to companies like Chipotle or even PSSI, whose annual revenue is estimated to be more than $500 million? It’s clearly not enough to deter large, wealthy corporations such as these from hiring minors or otherwise violating child labor laws.
Even $1 million fines are clearly not enough to deter large, wealthy corporations such as these from hiring minors or otherwise violating child labor laws.
Still, it is good that PSSI will now face at least some consequences for their alleged practice of employing young teenagers to undertake the dangerous, late-night task of cleaning meat processing facilities. The U.S. Department of Labor filed for an injunction against PSSI in November, requiring the company to stop hiring minors.
A federal judge in Nebraska agreed to impose the injunction against PSSI, but the company has remained defiant. Company representative Gina Swenson has insisted that PSSI has an “absolute company-wide prohibition against the employment of anyone under the age of 18 and zero tolerance for any violation of that policy — period.”
People living in Worthington, Minnesota might beg to differ with Swenson. Worthington is home to both a JBS meatpacking plant and a nearby turkey processing facility that are cleaned by PSSI workers. According to Star Tribune reporter Christopher Vondracek, PSSI’s employment of minors is an open secret.
The company has a hiring office set up “just steps from the Worthington High School football field,” Vondracek reported, with signs promising wages close to $20 per hour.
Townspeople interviewed by Vondracek acknowledged that “illegal workers”—including both minors and those who lack proper documentation—have long taken on the after-hours shifts at the area’s meat processing facilities.
Now that secret is out, and PSSI may receive a slap on the wrist for getting caught. But what happens next? Most importantly, what will happen to the young people who are likely working for PSSI out of economic necessity?
Many young people in Worthington are already accustomed to living in the shadows, thanks in part to the lingering impact of a 2006 raid by immigration officials that resulted in hundreds of arrests at the local meatpacking plant.
Despite this precariousness, the town is a bustling, increasingly diverse place full of recent immigrants and refugees—a fact that has at times bred resentment among some of the older, white population.
A 2019 Washington Post article documented the deep divisions riling Worthington, where even the local school bus driver was openly ignoring the “strange kids” (i.e., non-white, non-English speaking) who were lining up at the bus stop.
Many of those kids were unaccompanied minors, and young people in similarly dire circumstances are still finding their way to Worthington today. Vondracek’s Star Tribune article notes that Nobles County, where Worthington sits, has taken in more than 100 unaccompanied minors in recent months.
The teenagers working for PSSI are not going to go away, even if their employer gets publicly reprimanded for hiring them. Instead, we have a mess of our own to clean up, involving immigration, economics, and our collective willingness to look the other way—until we are temporarily forced not to—while children do our dirty work.