102 Children Found Cleaning Slaughterhouses Overnight — Packers Sanitation Pays $1.5 Million
WASHINGTON — Some of them were 13 years old, working the graveyard shift with acid-based cleaners on the kill floor. On February 17, 2023, the U.S. Department of Labor announced that Packers Sanitation Services Inc. had paid $1,544,076 in civil penalties after investigators found the company illegally employed at least 102 children in hazardous sanitation jobs at 13 meat processing plants across eight states.
The Investigation
PSSI, one of the country’s largest food safety sanitation contractors, hired children ages 13 to 17 to clean slaughterhouses overnight in Arkansas, Colorado, Indiana, Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska, Tennessee and Texas. The minors worked with caustic cleaning chemicals on the most dangerous equipment in the plants — back saws, brisket saws and head splitters. At least three of them were injured on the job, including a 13-year-old who suffered caustic chemical burns.
The Wage and Hour Division’s investigation began in August 2022 and moved fast: by December, a federal court in Nebraska had issued a nationwide injunction ordering the company to comply with child labor law. The penalty — $15,138 for each child, the maximum the Fair Labor Standards Act allows — was paid in full on February 16, 2023.
The Department’s Stance
“The child labor violations in this case were systemic and reached across eight states, and clearly indicate a corporate-wide failure by Packers Sanitation Services at all levels,” said Jessica Looman, Principal Deputy Administrator of the Wage and Hour Division.
Technically, this was a wage-and-hour enforcement action rather than an OSHA case — but the hazards at its center are pure occupational safety: corrosive chemicals, energized equipment, and blades designed to cut through bone, handled overnight by workers legally too young to be near them.
Lessons to Take Home
For safety managers, the sharpest lesson is about contractors and verification. These children worked inside plants owned by major meatpackers, wearing a contractor’s uniform — and the host facilities’ safety systems never caught it. Whoever is on your site at 2 a.m. is your safety problem, no matter whose payroll they are on. Verify who your contractors send through the gate, audit the night shift the way you audit days, and hold cleaning crews to the same basic safety rules as everyone else.
And remember that sanitation work concentrates the worst hazards in the building: chemicals, hot water, and machines that must be de-energized before anyone reaches inside. If your facility uses a sanitation contractor, walk their shift, check their training records, and make our talk on taking shortcuts required reading — because the shortcuts here were taken by adults, and paid for by children.
