Perdue Farms and JBS, two of the country’s biggest meatpackers, will pay a combined $8 million after the Department of Labor found the companies relied for years on migrant children to work in their slaughterhouses.
The deals, announced this week, are part of a flurry of child labor settlements that have come in the last days of the Biden administration, which has been cracking down on the practice.
It is rare for major brands to come under federal scrutiny for child labor. Many food-processing and manufacturing companies outsource cleaning and other jobs to third-party staffing firms, which technically employ the workers and shield companies from any violations.
Federal investigators found that children had been working at a Perdue plant on Virginia’s Eastern Shore as far back as 2020. The children, who had been hired by a staffing firm, worked late hours and performed dangerous tasks with electric knives and hot sealing tools.
Perdue agreed to pay $4 million in restitution to the children and to organizations including Kids in Need of Defense, a national nonprofit organization that provides lawyers to young migrants who come to the country alone. Perdue, one of the country’s largest poultry processors, will also pay a $150,000 civil penalty.
In a statement, Perdue said it strongly disagreed that it should be held liable for the child labor violations but wanted to avoid a prolonged dispute with the Labor Department.
JBS, the world’s largest meat processor, agreed to pay $4 million after investigators found that children as young as 13 were working overnight cleaning shifts at its slaughterhouses in states including Colorado, Minnesota and Nebraska. Mostly from Central America, the children were hired through an outside sanitation company. They worked with potent chemicals — sometimes showing up to school with burns — and washed hazardous tools, including head splitters.
The company said the money would be administered by KIND and used to help children with scholarships, stipends, English classes and job training.
JBS said in a statement that it had stopped using staffing agencies to fill its sanitation shifts, and hoped the money would “provide valuable resources” to children in need.
On Thursday, the Labor Department said it had fined a sanitation company, QSI, $400,000 for employing children to clean slaughterhouses in eight states, including a Tyson Foods plant in Virginia. A separate child labor investigation into Tyson remains open. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Federal law bars minors from doing any work in slaughterhouses because of the high risk of injury. But in recent years, thousands of Mexican and Central American children have come to the United States alone and ended up in grueling jobs across many industries, The New York Times reported in a series of articles.
In response to The Times’s reporting, the White House announced in early 2023 that it would focus on rooting out violations and holding companies accountable, even when they used outside contractors. Last year, federal investigators found more than 4,000 children working in violation of child labor law.
Federal child labor fines remain capped at $15,000, despite efforts to raise them.
Officials at the Labor Department said they hoped the settlements would send a lasting message to companies using staffing agencies.
“We have seen far too many businesses and employers too often getting labor by any means necessary,” said Seema Nanda, the department’s chief legal officer. “Our work has focused on the fact that you can’t turn a blind eye to exploitation to get the job done.”
Earlier this month, Hearthside Food Solutions, which manufactures and packs food for some the nation’s best-known brands, agreed to pay $4.5 million to settle a child labor investigation with the Illinois Department of Labor and attorney general.
The state investigation was launched after The Times found that migrant children were working overnight around dangerous machinery on household products including Cheerios and Chewy Bars.
Up to half the money will go to children who worked at Hearthside factories when they were younger than 16. On Thursday the company said in a statement that it denied any liability or wrongdoing, and that it had cut ties with the staffing agencies that hired children.
Hearthside filed for bankruptcy in November.
