Some businesses really ought to be out of business

Child labor is nothing new. I read somewhere that in the early years of the 20th century, children under the age of 16 made up nearly 20% of the workforce. Tens of thousands of child workers were under the age of 12. Kids were prized in the mills because they were small and nimble, and could get into tight spaces and run small machines. As you can imagine, this made for some pretty dangerous workplaces. 

The terrible working conditions in the meatpacking industry are nothing new either. Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle, a fictional account of the miserable life endured by immigrants in the Chicago slaughterhouses in 1906.  

While child labor and slaughterhouse horrors are nothing new, it's stunning that, despite the labor laws that were enacted in the early 1900's to fix some of the more egregious problems out there, plenty of egregious situations persist. 

But where there's a will, there's a way, and some companies always seem to manage to skirt the laws, especially when it comes to miserable, low wage, high awfulness industries that employ/exploit immigrant workers.

Packers Sanitation Services, Inc. was founded in Iowa - meatpacking central - nearly 50 years ago. They're now "accused of employing dozens of children to clean the killing floors of slaughterhouses during graveyard shifts."

The company:

...allegedly employed at least 31 kids — one as young as 13 — to work overnight cleaning shifts at three facilities in Nebraska and Minnesota, according to court documents filed on Wednesday.

Those practices would violate the Fair Labor Standards Act, which prohibits “oppressive child labor” and minors from working in any kind of hazardous employment, according to the complaint. The Department of Labor’s Child Labor Regulations designates many roles in slaughterhouse and meatpacking facilities as hazardous for minors.

In the court filing, U.S. Labor Secretary Marty Walsh asked the Federal District Court of Nebraska to issue a temporary restraining order and nationwide preliminary injunction against the company to stop it from employing minors while the Labor Department continues its investigation. (Source: NBC News)

Evidence suggests that there are a lot more than the 31 kiddos they've found so far. (Meanwhile: Go, Boston boy, Marty Walsh!)

PSSI, of course, is blah-blahing about "zero tolerance," and blaming the problems on "rogue individuals."

I'm pretty sure that there's no explicit corporate policy allowing for child labor, but I'm guessing there's probably plenty of wink-wink-nudge-nudge, "I see nothing, I know nothing" going on there. There usually is. (And, surprise, surprise, PSSI "has been owned by a series of private equity funds since 2007.")

Let PSSI tut-tut all they want, but here's the thing:

The investigation found that minors cleaned the killing floors and various machines — including meat and bone cutting saws and a grinding machine — during the graveyard shifts, according to the complaint...

Interviews with the kids — which were conducted in Spanish, their first language, according to the complaint — revealed that several children began their shifts at the facilities at 11 p.m. and worked until 5, 6 or 7 a.m. Some worked up to six or seven days a week.

Some of the kids have suffered chemical burns. Meanwhile, some managers have tried to get rid of damning documents and text messages.

PSSI's overall record is not pristine. And not that you'd expect a pristine record for a company that cleans slaughterhouses, but with PSSI - which has one of the worst safety track records in the country when it comes to workplace injuries - there are things. 

...three PSSI workers have died on the job since 2018, including one who was decapitated cleaning a chicken chiller, according to Occupational Health and Safety Administration records highlighted in a March report by the watchdog group Private Equity Stakeholder Project.

And four others had accidents that resulted in amputations, according to the report.

The PE owners dispute the report. But of course.  

I always like to look at what a company under fire has to say for itself. There's nothing I could find on their website that addresses the latest from the Department of Labor. But there's no lack of corporate-speak messaging. 

Here's a smattering:

Bringing together experts in engineering, chemistry, and food safety to develop new ways to innovate for a safer, faster and smarter sanitation with shared sustainability goals to help conserve resources and save costs for our partners.

Hmmmm. One way to save costs is, of course, to hire desperate immigrants, so desperate that they'll let their kids work in dangerous conditions. 

Then there's this:

WHY COMPANIES ARE PARTNERING WITH US Together, we are your integrated food safety solutions partner safeguarding your people, products and brand through a food safety lens. With our sanitation, chemistry, pest and intervention solutions, we work together to ensure a safer food supply for all.

Ah, the old dazzle 'em with the old food safety lens.

And my personal favorite:

A MOMENT PERFECTED
You work hard to create moments of enjoyment.

Because nothing says a perfected moment of enjoyment like some poor bastard decapitated while cleaning a chicken chiller, or a 13 year old cleaning a bone saw or grinding machine in the middle of the night, when he should be home in bed getting the rest he needs to be ready to learn the next morning. 

I'm not going to blame the parents here. No, it's not good, and they shouldn't be letting their kids work all night, but can you imagine the dire conditions they've fled if having their children work cleaning a slaughterhouse seems like an improvement?

But I will blame PSSI. Shame on you, and the private equity investors you rode in on.