The wage settlement is one of the largest ever reached for U.S. poultry workers.
The owners and operators of a network of California poultry processors and distributors were ordered to pay $4.8 million in back wages and damages and to give up $1 million in profits after a Department of Labor investigation found the owners illegally employed children as young as 14 to work dangerous jobs.
The wage settlement is one of the largest ever reached for U.S. poultry workers, the DOL said in a statement.
The investigation by the department’s Wage and House Division involving A1 Meat Solutions, JRC Culinary Group, Moon Poultry and five other businesses alleged that the enterprise employed children in dangerous conditions, including using sharp knives to debone poultry.
Additionally, investigators found the employers and their associates denied poultry workers and packers overtime wages and falsified payroll records to obstruct the probe, the DOL said. Supervisors at the employers’ facilities also allegedly retaliated against workers once the investigation began in January 2024, calling them derogatory slurs and changing terms of employment, investigators said.
Wage theft from children; those’re some real scumbags.
I was so disgusted by this frankly piss-weak judgement that I tracked down the press release: https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/whd/whd20240502
The media contacts are: carnevali.jose@dol.gov and petersen.michael.w@dol.gov
I sent them the following email:
I was absolutely disgusted to hear of the paltry fines issued to the network of poultry processors guilty of wage theft, falsifying records, obstructing the investigation and obvious child endangerment.
How can you possibly allow these bad actors to remain in business and find new ways to profit from risking children’s lives and safety?
It’s unconscionable that no jail time was mandated.
If this counts as a win, it only goes to show that the DOL is toothless and incapable of protecting American workers from predatory employers.
Bucket, meet drop.
Send the executives to fucking jail.
If the kids parents’ did the same thing they’d be in jail. Turns out abusive parents should just incorporate that way child endangerment laws no longer apply.
4.8 million is one of the largest ever reached for US poultry workers?
No wonder this shit keeps happening.
It’s absolutely awful, and the fine is disgustingly small, and the executives and owners should be jailed for several years. That said, learning how to debone a chicken at age 14 is a skill that will serve them well for the rest of their lives, and 14 is definitely not too young to be learning this. When I was 14 I worked at an Au Bon Pain. I used sharp knives all the time, and I was constant around very hot equipment like ovens and coffee brewers. It was a great job, I had to work very hard, I learned a ton, and they let me take home all the leftover pastries I wanted. Also no one stole my wages, so fuck these chicken criminals.
Revoke their corporate charter. Their ability to continue doing business should be taken away. Forever.
To bad we can only vote for cowards and shitters
But don’t they always say sharp knives are more safe than dull knives?
I wish my wife learned some knife skills as a child. She’s not allowed to cut cheese anymore.
Yeah, I was gonna say…that’s rather better than the alternative.
Aside from the all of the absolute horror, that is an amazing headline
