Last November, the U.S. Department of Labor filed an injunction in U.S. District Court in Nebraska against Packers Sanitation Services for illegally employing children in meatpacking plants it serves. Judge John M. Garrard swiftly granted the injunction requiring Packers to stop “employing oppressive child labor.” The Department of Labor (DOL) has now found that Packers had employed at least 50 children in night shifts in four Minnesota, Nebraska and Arkansas meatpacking plants. The children, ranging in age from 13 to 17, were not fluent in English, and they cleaned kill floor bone-cutting saws, grinding machines and electric knives with corrosive cleaning fluids.
Opinion: Protect Iowa's children from harm at the workplace
