Federal agents found more than two dozen minors illegally working inside a poultry plant in Kidron, Ohio, earlier this month, according to local immigration advocates who spoke to NBC News on the condition of anonymity.
The children, mainly from Guatemala, according to the advocates, were working in meat processing and sanitation in a plant run by Gerber’s Poultry, which produces Amish Farm Chicken, advertised with the slogan “Better feed, better taste.”
They won’t even get fined more than they profited.
The article gives hardly any information. Clearly what they did was wrong, but child slave labor isn’t what I would label this without further information. The only minor discussed in the article was a 16 year old from another event that gave them reason to ban people under 18 from working in meat packing plants saying they are more dangerous.
The local who did comment said that kids worked second shift so they could work around their school schedules. Implying the kids are going to school, which more than likely rules out the slave part.
The company should get hit HARD for breaking labor laws and putting minors at risk of injuries. Had those same minors been working down the street at the movie theater or such, it may have been completely legal.
The raid happened at 9pm, and labor laws for minors limit working hours till 11pm (in Ohio)
Anybody not being paid a living wage is functionally a slave and the reason this company was using immigrant children is because they could grossly underpay them and pocket the difference.
If it were an option for meat production, they would have just taken the Nestlé approach and used child slaves that were geographically distant enough to be swept under the rug.
But regardless, the company almost certainly won’t be “hit hard”. They’ll be given a slap on the wrist for getting caught and will continue doing deeply fucked things in a deeply fucked industry.
If by some miracle the people responsible are actually punished, there’s still a thousand other companies racing to the bottom because that’s how the system is rigged.
Any company paying suppliers and workers fairly will fold to any competition that doesn’t because few people are paid enough to be able to afford products from people who are paid enough.
It’s a problem far, far deeper than children working at a single factory and I’m not even slightly surprised that a company that feeds live animals into blenders is at the bottom of that hole, furiously digging.
Fixed fines only exist to punish the poor. The factory just see fines as being a cost of business.
Even better, you can just enter them right into spreadsheets so you know exactly how profitable it will be to steal wages from children, even if you get caught.
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