A Tennessee-based cleaning company has agreed to pay nearly $650,000 in civil penalties after federal investigators found the company employed at least 24 children at two slaughtering and meatpacking facilities, the U.S. Department of Labor announced.

A federal court in Iowa approved a consent order and judgment Monday with Fayette Janitorial Service LLC, which requires the company to pay $649,304 in civil penalties, the Labor Department said in a news release. The company must also hire a third party to implement company policies to prevent the illegal employment of children and create a program for reporting concerns about child labor violations.

The Labor Department obtained a preliminary injunction against Fayette Janitorial in late February after an investigation discovered that the company employed at least 24 children, including children as young as 13, on overnight sanitation shifts at two slaughtering and meatpacking facilities in Sioux City, Iowa, and Accomac, Virginia.

Under U.S. law, children under 18 are prohibited from being employed in dangerous occupations such as meat and poultry slaughtering, processing, rendering and packing operations. According to the Labor Department, Fayette Janitorial had minors "clean dangerous kill floor equipment such as head splitters, jaw pullers, meat bandsaws, and neck clippers."

"The Department of Labor is determined to stop our nation’s children from being exploited and endangered in jobs they should never have been near," Regional Solicitor Christine Heri said in a statement. "Children in hazardous occupations drove the Fair Labor Standards Act’s passage in 1938. Yet in 2024, we still find U.S. companies employing children in risky jobs, jeopardizing their safety for profit."

The Labor Department reported last February that child labor violations have increased 69% since 2018. During the last fiscal year, the department said its investigators found that more than 5,800 children had been employed in violation of federal child labor laws. 

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Children worked on overnight shifts to clean killing floor

Fayette Janitorial, which is headquartered in Somerville, Tennessee, employed dozens of children at Seaboard Triumph Foods LLC in Iowa and Perdue Farms in Virginia, according to the Labor Department.

According to a federal complaint, department's investigation “found that Fayette employs minors under the age of 18 whose job is to clean the killing floor.” In the complaint, the department says the company employed 15 children in Virginia and at least nine children in Iowa on its overnight sanitation shifts.

The department said investigators witnessed children hiding their faces and carrying "glittered school backpacks" before starting their shifts at the Iowa facility. The children used "corrosive" cleaners to clean kill floor equipment.

At the Virginia facility, the department said at least one child, who was identified as a 14-year-old, suffered severe injuries after the child tried to remove debris from machinery.

On Feb. 27, the department obtained a preliminary injunction against Fayette Janitorial to halt the company's employment of children. The company provides contract sanitation and cleaning services for meat and poultry processing facilities in more than 30 states and employs more than 600 workers, the department said.

The company agreed to nationwide compliance six days after the department filed its temporary restraining order and injunction. The Iowa and Virginia facilities also said in February that they had terminated their contracts with Fayette Janitorial.

Recent child labor violations in the U.S.

In recent years, federal authorities have been cracking down on child labor violations across the country, promising to hold employers accountable.

In March, a Tennessee parts supplier was fined for illegally employing children as young as 14 in dangerous jobs and subjecting them to "oppressive child labor." In the same month, a Baskin-Robbins franchisee in Utah was fined for allowing 64 employees ages 14 to 15 "to work too late in the day and too many hours in a week while school was in session at eight locations," the Labor Department said.

Federal investigators said in January that inadequate safety standards at a poultry processing plant in Mississippi led to the death of a 16-year-old sanitation worker. The teen died on July 14, 2023, after he was pulled into dangerous machinery while cleaning equipment. It was the second fatality at the facility in just over two years.

A Southern California poultry processor and several related poultry companies, which supplied grocers including Aldi and Ralphs, agreed to pay $3.8 million last December for violations including illegally employing children as young as 14 to debone poultry with sharp knifes and operate power-driven lifts to move pallets.

In May 2023, three McDonald's franchisees with a combined 62 restaurants in Kentucky, Indiana, Maryland and Ohio paid fines totaling more than $212,000 after the Labor Department charged them with violating the labor rights of 305 minors, including two 10-year-olds who were not paid.

A Wisconsin company paid a $1.5 million fine in February 2023 after the Labor Department found it employed 102 minors ages 13 to 17 in “hazardous occupations” at 13 meat processing facilities in eight states.

Contributing: Keenan Thomas and Mike Snider