The US Department of Labor (DOL) has initiated charges against Fayette Industrial on child labor complaints. Fayette Janitorial Service LLC, which operates under the title Fayette Industrial, has been accused of hiring children as young as 13 to work for the cleaning services they provide across the country. The DOL approached a federal court to have a nationwide restraining order and injunction against the company until the company’s labor practices could be properly investigated as these violations are pretty gruesome considering the dangerous circumstances under which these children were made to work. The case was filed by the DOL’s Officer of the Solicitor in the US District Court for the Northern District of Iowa after initial investigations by the Wage and Hour Division. The violations reportedly occurred in meat plants in Virginia and Sioux City.
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Fayette Industrial Child Labor Violations Spark Outrage
The US Department of Labor traditionally looks into matters concerning the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) which regulates the employment of children, specifically prohibiting the employment of those under 18 in high-risk work environments. The dangers of the meat and poultry industry are well documented, especially considering the heavy equipment sometimes used in these settings. Fayette Janitorial Service LLC is a cleaning company that is known for catering to this meat processing industry, helping with the cleaning requirements and providing staffers to regularly address the cleaning needs of such companies. The company has been in operation since 1994 so it’s by no means a company unfamiliar with the laws and employment standards that surround the work that they do.
Despite this, the Fayette Industrial child labor violations were recently brought to light. The company has been accused of employing up to 24 children aged between 13 and 17 in cleaning slaughterhouses and working overnight shifts to get the tasks done. The Department of Labor’s filing states that 15 children were put to work at a Perdue Farms plant in Accomac, Virginia, and 9 children were employed at Seaboard Triumph Foods LLC in Sioux City, Iowa. The company has around 600 workers employed in their services and while the number of child workers make up a small part of it, they’re enough to be a cause for concern and could only indicate the cases that have been caught in the act rather than the true number of underaged employees.
“The employment of children in hazardous occupations is an egregious violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act that should never occur. The Department of Labor continues to use every available legal resource to protect workers and end child labor violations. We are working diligently with other federal agencies to combat child labor exploitation nationwide.”
—United States Solicitor of Labor, Seema Nanda
There is no word out on the labor law fines that the Fayette Industrial child labor violation might result in, only that the US Department of Labor has currently attempted to have their services put on hold until the matter can be looked into carefully.
The Fayette Child Labor Case Isn’t the First We’re Hearing of Such Violations
The US Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division has been looking into the matter of child labor law violations at slaughterhouses since last year after a New York Times article wrote about children who had been seriously injured working at such plants. Perdue Farms and Tyson Foods, both among the country’s biggest poultry producers, were found guilty of having children work overnight shifts handling dangerous material and working around the unsafe equipment at these locations. The companies tried to shift the blame onto the cleaning companies they were hiring who had brought on these underaged workers, claiming innocence in the matter.
Even before the incident came to light, another cleaner company, Packers Sanitation Services Inc., was accused of ignoring child labor protection laws and employing minors to clean the meat plants. The company had to pay USD $1.5 million in labor law fines, the amount resulting after they were charged USD $15,138 for each minor they had employed. The Fayette Industrial child labor case is a reminder of the serious matter of child labor powering the meat industry and the lack of self-regulation among businesses to ensure they are in adherence to the law. Unfortunately, many states are moving to ease up on the labor laws and allow young workers into these dangerous industries which will only put more lives at risk than ever before.