I mean; if the likely outcome was just losing their job these kids would probably have lied to the investigators too. The evidence here is they wanted to work since this isn't a slavery situation.
100 is such a small number in the grand scheme of things. There are much more than 100 children illegally employed in the US. I'd guarantee it. A lot of families need money.
That’s not true though. The company knew exactly what they were doing and still they went ahead and doubled down on it.
Excerpt from article: “Our investigation found Packers Sanitation Services’ systems flagged some young workers as minors, but the company ignored the flags. When the Wage and Hour Division arrived with warrants, the adults – who had recruited, hired and supervised these children – tried to derail our efforts to investigate their employment practices,” said Wage and Hour Regional Administrator Michael Lazzeri in Chicago.
But if I ask "how old are you?" in an interview and reject anyone who says "17", then all the interviewees are going to say "18". Kids are pretty dumb but they can figure this stuff out. I'd be happy to claim 10 years of Kubernetes experience if I thought it would give me an advantage in the job market, no question. The children in question are already violating local labour laws; claiming to be 18 doesn't really hurt at that point.
Although I will note "tried to derail our efforts" is one of those things that could mean anything. People who are innocent might also have tried to derail efforts. Being investigated prompts some funny responses by businessmen.
> The children in question are already violating local labour laws;
No they aren’t. Their age was in company’s system and company ignored it. Also they are “children”. You expect a 13 year old on ideal behavior while grown adults at the company were knowingly breaking the law?
> I'd be happy to claim 10 years of Kubernetes experience if I thought it would give me an advantage in the job market, no question
1. Software development is not a hazardous job, 2. You’re an adult.
Oh, I missed that. I thought they meant that the company had ignored the investigators flagging that there were minors employed. Yeah that is pretty bad.
Although I maintain there are going to be a lot more than 100 children illegally employed as cleaners in the US. Not everyone is going to be stupid enough to keep good records like that.
> Software development is not a hazardous job
Adults shouldn't be at risk of being injured on a worksite. The standard is supposed to be no lasting damage regardless of whether children are involved or not.
The article mentions 3 injuries, but frankly I don't care if they are injuring 18 year olds or 13 year olds; the problem is the injury not which end of teenager-hood a person falls. That is an issue, but it is an issue that is unrelated to employing underage workers.
The point is the minors working at a meat packing company are victims, it’s ridiculous to blame them regardless of whether they lied or not and in this case they didn’t. The real entity to blame is the company which allowed this to happen and got away with meager $1.5 million fine.
> I don't care if they are injuring 18 year olds or 13 year olds..That is an issue, but it is an issue that is unrelated to employing underage workers.
It is related because meat packing is a hazardous job and there are more chances of injury for a minor than an adult, regardless of the training. That’s the whole reason the law specifically has an age limit for this type of jobs.
Victims of what, a sudden rush of employment? Child labour laws are, at best, a statistical observation that the majority of children are better off being at school than going to work and it is safer just to insist than try and work out the edge cases.
It is appropriate that the company was fined in accordance with the law, they shouldn't have done this. But fact is that there are some kids where working at 13 will just lead to them having better outcomes than anything else. There are 3 victims here who were injured, beyond that there needs to be actual evidence before we start calling them victims. It isn't like at 17 they're victimised and then at 18 the scales fall from their eyes and everything is roses and sunshine. The line is a reasonable judgement call based on averages and estimated opportunity cost.
> It is related because meat packing is a hazardous job and there are more chances of injury for a minor than an adult, regardless of the training.
Depends on the injury I suppose, but my guess is that if they're stupid enough to have underage employees on payroll this company was probably not providing a safe workplace. I assume injuries are high across the board.
A kid probably is more likely to get injured in the workplace just by virtue of being pretty clueless and a lot more lightweight, I grant you that. But it is quite possible that these injuries say more about the workplace than the age of the injured.
We don't know that. The DOL hasn't said what system "flagged" the kids as potentially underage.
The real question is why so much trust in a company which has clear motive to ignore these red flags for the sake of profit.
Children did not, under their own agency, seek out exploitative employment. We recognize that, as minors, their nominal consent is immaterial in the face of the overwhelming comparative sophistication of adults and adult institutions.
The kids did not figure this stuff out; the adults in the room did.
There's not enough information here to know either way.
What system flagged them, when, and based off of what information?
https://www.kcur.org/news/2023-02-17/child-labor-packers-san...
I don't know about this particular case, but I don't know of any large business that's purposefully hiring children, or people not legally able to work in the US. They're hiring immigrants who are providing false documents.
If you're already using false documents and lying about your nationality, lying about your age isn't exactly a huge step. Why _not_ start working as soon as you can reasonably "pass" for the required age?
> Iowa has proposed bill to to legalize exactly this.
That seems like a different problem entirely.
Establishing a culture where counterfeit or stolen identities are commonplace makes it difficult or impossible to ensure the other labor rules are followed even if the company wants to do so. If the company doesn't want to do so, then it's even more difficult to prove intent.
"I had no idea that guy was 16. He said he was 19. Here's the driver's license have gave us! Here's his I-9! He said he was 19, how could we have known?"
The above could have been said by a company who was honestly unaware of the deception, by one that doesn't care, or by one that is actively marketing to and even "importing" underage immigrant workers.
> This is happening because companies don’t want to pay fair wage.
This seems like a third issue still.
In isolation, paying more would drive increased competition for the job; it would give people _more_ incentive to apply under false pretenses, not less.
It's also not clear to me that there is a native workforce in these areas for these jobs, at any rate of pay. Those jobs are difficult to fill because they're seen as low status, not because they don't pay enough. Even today, Tyson provides some of the best-paying jobs in the area where I live. I don't see how increasing that gap even further would change anything.
Oh, I know they know.
My point is that Tyson (et al) doesn't "officially" know. Their employees are providing documents, Tyson is submitting those docs to the government, and that's that.
> Describing it even as “open secret” makes it sound more secretive than it is in practice.
Knowing something to be true and being able to prove that thing is true are two very different things.
How is this related to the story? The story is about companies using children as workers in hazardous job. It’s illegal regardless of their documentation status. Iowa has proposed bill to to legalize exactly this. This is happening because companies don’t want to pay fair wage.