The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) recently announced that it has asked a federal court to issue a nationwide temporary restraining order and injunction against Packers Sanitation Services Inc. LTD (PSSI)–one of the nation’s leading providers of food safety sanitation–to stop the company from illegally employing dozens of minor-aged workers.
According to The Washington Post, a federal judge on November 10 granted a preliminary injunction ordering the company to immediately stop using “oppressive child labor” and comply with DOL’s demands for information. DOL stated it would continue to investigate PSSI’s labor practices while the court decisions are pending.
PSSI provides contract sanitation services, chemical innovations, pest prevention, and other solutions for about 700 food processing facilities nationwide and employs about 17,000 workers.
Filed in the U.S. District Court for Nebraska in Lincoln, the complaint was prompted by an investigation by the department’s Wage and Hour Division, which discovered that PSSI had employed at least 31 children from 13 to 17 years of age in hazardous occupations. The jobs performed by the children included cleaning dangerous powered equipment during overnight shifts to fulfill sanitation contracts at JBS USA plants in Grand Island, Nebraska, and Worthington, Minnesota, and at Turkey Valley Farms in Marshall, Minnesota. Investigators also learned that several of the employed minors, including a 13-year-old employee, suffered caustic...
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