Fayette Janitorial Service LLC agreed to pay nearly $650,000 in civil penalties and the court-ordered mandate that it no longer employs minors.
A Tennessee-based sanitation company has agreed to pay more than half a million dollars after a federal investigation found it illegally hired at least two dozen children to clean dangerous meat processing facilities in Iowa and Virginia.
The U.S. Department of Labor announced Monday that Fayette Janitorial Service LLC entered into a consent judgment, in which the company agrees to nearly $650,000 in civil penalties and the court-ordered mandate that it no longer employs minors. The February filing indicated federal investigators believed at least four children had still been working at one Iowa slaughterhouse as of Dec. 12.
U.S. law prohibits companies from employing people younger than 18 to work in meat processing plants because of the hazards.
No fine for Perdue or Seaboard Triumph Foods though even though the kids were even allowed in the plants. How could we possibly hold them liable for vetting outside contractors.
That’s the way it works. It’s a risk management and mitigation strategy for companies. You hiring contractors and offload the liability.
From what I understand, and IANAL(with the best of em) we’d have to change the laws to go after companies for their contractor’s liability/negligence.
I think you’d be able to go after Perdue or seaboard if you could prove they were grossly negligence or derelict or knowingly hired this contractorbecause they used kids.
But they can play that legal “plausible deniability” card otherwise.