Powerful cutting blades in a meat processing plant. Photo by Getty Images.
Meatpacking giant Smithfield will pay a $2 million fine to resolve a child labor compliance order with the Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry, the largest child labor enforcement action in DLI history.
However, the fine will have virtually no impact on the company’s results, given the annual turnover of parent company WH Group Limited amounts to over 26 billion dollars.
A permission orther with the company will also require China’s Smithfield to inform the industry about child labor compliance; requiring child labor compliance by its employment agencies and sanitary facilities; and take other steps to ensure future child labor compliance, according to a DLI press release.
A DLI investigation found that between 2021 and 2023, the Smithfield-owned St. James plant employed at least 11 minor children between the ages of 14 and 17. The children also worked late on school nights and performed dangerous jobs such as working around chemicals. ; operating motor-driven machinery, including meat grinders, slicers and electrically powered conveyor belts; and operating non-automatic lifts, lifts or hoisting machines, including motorized pallet jacks and lifting pallet jacks.
“It is unacceptable that a company allows small children to do dangerous work late at night. This illegal behavior impacts the health, safety and well-being of children and their ability to focus on their education and their future,” said DLI Commissioner Nicole Blissenbach. “Fighting unlawful child labor in Minnesota is a priority for DLI and it will continue to dedicate resources to addressing and resolving these violations.”
In the fall of 2023, DLI entered into a consent order with Tony Downs Food Company in Madelia in another child labor case.
Also in 2023, Wisconsin-based Packers Sanitation Services civil fines paid to the Wage and Hour Division of the U.S. Department of Labor for employing minor children in hazardous occupations at meatpacking plants in eight states, including Minnesota.
In one statementSmithfield was combative at times, denying “that we knowingly hired anyone under the age of 18 to work at our St. James facility. We have not admitted liability as part of this settlement; However, in the interest of avoiding distraction from protracted litigation, we have agreed to settle this matter.”
The company said it uses E-Verify, a federal system that validates job eligibility based on federal data.
“Each of the 11 alleged minors passed through the E-Verify system using false identification. They all used a different name to be employed by Smithfield than the name DLI used to identify them at Smithfield,” the company said in the statement.
Smithfield emphasized that the company opposes child labor and has “taken proactive steps to enforce our policy prohibiting the employment of minors.”
The issue of child labor has attracted attention in recent years, spurred in part by: series of research articles in the New York Times, which mainly denounced the exploitation of migrant children.
“This shadow labor force extends across industries in every state and ignores child labor laws that have been in place for nearly a century. Twelve-year roofers in Florida and Tennessee. Underage slaughterhouse workers in Delaware, Mississippi and North Carolina. Children sawing planks of wood on night shifts in South Dakota,” the article said.
And child meat processing workers in Minnesota.
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