Faced with child labor in the US, companies are taking tough measures

Many major U.S. companies — including some of the country's largest consumer brands — say they are taking steps to eliminate child labor in their domestic supply chains, amid revelations that children are working in U.S. manufacturing and food production.

As hundreds of thousands of migrant children have crossed the southern border without their parents since 2021, increasing numbers have found themselves in dangerous, illegal jobs in every state, including factories, slaughterhouses and industrial dairy farms, The New York Times said in a report. series of articles.

As they exhausted themselves, children have been crushed by construction equipment, torn into industrial machinery and fallen from rooftops.

Now McDonald's says it is requiring private inspectors to check night shifts at slaughterhouses that supply some of the meat, where children as young as 13 were cleaning heavy machinery. Ford Motor Company suppliers now must scrutinize employees' faces when they arrive at work. Costco is having more audits conducted by Spanish-speaking inspectors.

Companies rely on private auditors to check for safety and labor problems at their suppliers, but those inspectors have repeatedly failed to detect persistent child labor violations, The Times reported in December. Inspectors left factories in the afternoon, even though children are usually hired to work at night. They examined the paperwork to verify the ages, but children tend to submit false documents. And they focused on workers hired directly by factories, although children are often brought in by outside employment agencies or contractors.

Along with McDonald's and Costco, Starbucks, Whole Foods and PepsiCo are revising the types of audits they require of their suppliers. The changes include improving assessments of night shifts and services provided by external contractors, such as cleaning companies, and moving away from advance notice of audits.

“We have been actively developing our focus on the risk of migrant child labor at home,” Whole Foods said in a statement.

Spanish-speaking auditors said recruiters courted them as companies rushed to hire workers.

“Investigations by the U.S. Department of Labor and the New York Times into child labor at U.S. companies have shown that the United States is not a low-risk country for human rights for brands and retailers,” reads a recent job posting from the accounting firm Arche. Advisors. “In the US we cannot complete all the work requested.”

The company's CEO, Greg Gardner, said in an interview that his company had seen a nearly 50 percent increase in its domestic audit activity, including requests to look specifically at child labor. “We're doing a type of audit that we've never done before,” he said. “This is the biggest change I have seen in 29 years.”

After children were found working for a Ford supplier in Michigan, the automaker said it was stepping up controls and requiring thousands of manufacturers to look more carefully at workers even after they were hired. Guards will inspect employees before each shift to ensure their faces match their ID cards. “Ford has strengthened our global supplier code of conduct based on lessons learned,” said Bob Holycross, Ford's chief sustainability officer.

Suppliers also add safeguards.

The Northwest Dairy Association said it is hiring auditors to interview night shift workers at about 300 dairy farms. On some of these farms, children operated industrial milking machines in violation of labor laws and were sometimes seriously injured, The Times found. The association, a major producer, supplies milk for brands such as Nestlé, Costco's Kirkland label and Safeway's private label Lucerne through its Darigold marketing arm.

Smithfield Foods, the country's largest pork producer, said it would bring in auditors annually to audit night shifts at 41 slaughterhouses. The company also has posted signs in Spanish and other languages ​​around its factories emphasizing age requirements.

Tyson Foods said it had added unannounced sanitation audits and instructed security officers to keep an eye out for young faces. Yet some shareholders are to press for stronger action.

Perdue Farms, where a 14-year-old's arm was mutilated while working for a cleaning company at a Virginia slaughterhouse, said it has added age verification audits for contractors. After The Times reported last year that children hired by an outside employment agency were working on Cheerios and other household products at the contract manufacturer Hearthside Food Solutions, the company said it had started requiring employees to prove their age with a certificate issued by the government issued photo ID.

Packers Sanitation Services, which last year paid a $1.5 million fine from the U.S. Department of Labor for sending children to clean slaughterhouses, has gone even further. It has ordered hiring managers to reject applicants if they look too young to match the ages in their documents, even if they pass every other form of screening.

Some companies choose to hire night shift workers directly, rather than using contractors, to avoid potential violations. These include global meatpacker JBS, where high school students brought in by Packers Sanitation suffered chemical burns. This work will now be done internally, by unionized employees.

The Times' December report focused on deficiencies in audits conducted by UL Solutions, one of the nation's largest companies that monitors workplaces for labor violations as part of a so-called social audit. The company is schedule an initial public offering, with a target valuation of $5 billion. This year, UL is exploring selling its social audit business before its initial public offering, according to three people familiar with the talks. UL Solutions declined to comment.

Accountants expect that child labor will be an important point of attention for companies this year. In January, Amazon convened companies including Target, Disney and PepsiCo to discuss ways to eliminate underage workers from U.S. supply chains. Another summit, sponsored by Walmart and aimed at improving social audits, is planned for March.

The nonprofits Verité and AIM-Progress, which promote responsible labor practices, are retraining 600 U.S. suppliers and staffing agencies. The initiative is funded by 12 companies, including some that The Times reports have profited from migrant child labor: McDonald's; General mills; the snack food giant Mondelez, owner of Oreo and dozens of other products; Cheez-It's owner, Kellanova; and Unilever, the company behind Ben & Jerry's. The new guidelines direct providers to ensure that all children found to be working receive social services and are not simply dismissed.

“They should also look at what they're paying people,” says Shawn MacDonald, CEO of Verité, “and why they're having trouble finding people outside of children who are willing to take on this work.”