Company has hired 24 minors to clean slaughterhouses, Labor Department says

A Tennessee-based company employed at least 20 children as young as 13 who worked night shifts cleaning dangerous equipment at slaughterhouses, including a 14-year-old whose arm was mangled by a machine, the Department of Labor said Wednesday.

The department on Wednesday filed a request for a temporary restraining order and injunction against the company Fayette Janitorial Service LLC in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Iowa. It provides cleaning services at slaughterhouses in several states, including Iowa and Virginia, where the department says investigations have shown the company has hired children to clean factories.

The Labor Department opened its investigation after an article in The New York Times Magazine reported that Fayette had hired migrant children to work the nightly cleaning crew at a Perdue Farms plant on Virginia's eastern coast.

Fayette did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A spokesperson told The Times in September that the company was not aware of any minors on its staff and was only aware of the 14-year-old's actual age after he was injured.

Meat processing is among the nation's most dangerous industries, and minors are not allowed to work in slaughterhouses under federal law due to the high risk of injury. But that hasn't stopped thousands of destitute migrant children from coming to the United States from Mexico and Central America to work dangerous jobs, including in meatpacking plants.

The Labor Department found that Fayette had hired at least 24 children between the ages of 13 and 17 to work the night shift cleaning dangerous, electrically powered equipment at a Perdue factory in Accomack County, Virginia, and at a factory operated by Seaboard Triumph Foods. in Sioux City, Iowa. Fifteen children worked at the Virginia plant and at least nine children were found to work at the Iowa plant, the department said in its complaint seeking an injunction and restraining order.

Their duties include cleaning “kill floor equipment” such as head splitters, jaw pullers, meat band saws and neck cutters, according to the Department of Labor.

The Times Magazine article focused on one child, Marcos Cux, who was adopted by Fayette at age 13 after arriving in Virginia from a village in Guatemala. Marcos was sanitizing a deboning area at the Perdue plant in Accomack County in February 2022 when he thought he saw a torn piece of a rubber glove on a conveyor belt and reached out to grab it. The machine suddenly moved and tore his forearm open to the bone. He was 14 at the time and in eighth grade.

According to the Labor Department complaint, “someone from the Perdue facility's sanitation office” called 9-1-1 to report the injury. When a dispatcher asked the employee's age, the caller remained silent and then responded with “Um” before the line disconnected.

When the call was reconnected 30 seconds later, the dispatcher again asked for the injured worker's age and was told he was 19, according to the complaint.

Marcos missed a month of school and required three surgeries, including skin grafts from his thighs to his arm, and six months of physical therapy. Fayette paid his medical bills.

A spokeswoman for Perdue said the company canceled its contract with Fayette before the Department of Labor filed a complaint.

“There is no place for underage labor in our company or our industry,” spokeswoman Andrea Staub said in a statement. “Perdue has strong safeguards in place to ensure that all employees are legally eligible to work in our facilities – and we expect the same from our suppliers.”

Labor Department investigators received reports that some Fayette workers were carrying “pink and purple sparkly backpacks,” and that the younger ones were “noticeably hiding their faces,” while older workers were not.

“Some of these children were too young to even legally work,” the Department of Labor said in the complaint.

The Labor Department confirmed the investigation into Fayette in September, along with investigations into Perdue, Tyson Foods and QSI, a company that provided cleaning crews for Tyson and is part of a conglomerate called the Vincit Group.

The order the department is seeking against Fayette would prohibit her from refusing to cooperate with the investigation and from telling employees not to talk to investigators, Labor Department spokesman Jake Andrejat said.

Fayette isn't the only cleaning company drawing the attention of federal regulators over allegations that it uses child labor. Packers Sanitation Services Inc. paid a $1.5 million fine last year after a Labor Department investigation found that children between the ages of 13 and 17 were working night shifts at 13 meatpacking plants in eight states, mostly in the South and Midwest.

Hanna Dreier reporting contributed.