It took vigilance by educators at Walnut Middle School in Grand Island, Nebraska, to blow open one of the most egregious cases of U.S. child labor abuse in recent memory. In August 2022, the school told police about acid burns on the hand and knee of a 14-year-old student who said she worked nights at a local slaughterhouse.
A Department of Labor investigation into the incident found that Packers Sanitation Services, a Wisconsin-based leading food safety management company, had been employing minors in overnight shifts to use “caustic chemicals to clean razor sharp saws” in abattoir-cleaning operations. PSSI paid $1.5 million after the Labor Department found the company had hired 102 children as young as 13, including unaccompanied undocumented minors who recently crossed the southern border into the United States, in violation of federal child-labor laws. It is important to be familiar with labor laws – here are the labor laws your boss doesn’t want you to know about.
The high-profile case helped urge Biden administration officials to escalate efforts to root out illegal child-labor practices, including the creation of an interagency task force. Last year, there were 835 cases involving child-labor violations, the highest number since at least 2013, based on data posted to the Labor Department’s website. An estimated 3,876 minors were employed in these violations, a 178% increase compared to 2013. Despite this spike in child-labor violations, some states are moving to...
stage at the Ninth Circuit, where pharmaceutical companies say a momentous new ruling "illustrates perfectly" the constitutional concerns of U. S. Supreme Court justices regarding FCA enforcement. ...