‘Oppressive’ child labor found at poultry plant’s kill floor after teen’s death, feds say
A U.S. chicken producer is again facing child labor accusations after a 16-year-old worker was killed at its poultry plant in Mississippi last July, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
On May 1, four teenagers, including two 16-year-olds and two 17-year-olds, were found working on the kill floor at Mar-Jac Poultry’s processing facility in Jasper, Alabama, federal court filings show.
With three teens’ shifts starting at 11 p.m. — and a fourth teen’s shift starting at 8:30 p.m. — they were each tasked with “hanging live chickens on hooks for slaughter and cutting meat from the carcasses,” according to court documents filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama.
This violates federal child labor provisions in place to protect minors from dangerous jobs that have proven deadly.
On July 14, 2023, Duvan Robert Tomas Perez, a 16-year-old migrant from Guatemala, was killed while cleaning a chicken deboning machine at Mar-Jac’s plant in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, according to a wrongful death lawsuit, McClatchy News previously reported.
The Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration found Perez was fatally pulled into the “still-energized” machine because Mar-Jac Poultry MS LLC “disregarded safety standards.”
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OSHA cited the company over his death in January, according to a news release.
Now, the Labor Department is seeking a court order to stop Mar-Jac from selling and shipping “poultry tainted by oppressive child labor” from the company’s plant in Alabama, court filings say.
An “urgent” request for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction filed by Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su asks the court to prevent Mar-Jac Poultry of Alabama, LLC, from profiting off products linked to child labor.
Following the request, an evidentiary hearing was held on May 14 and May 15, Mar-Jac said in a May 20 news release provided to McClatchy News in response to a request for comment.
Instead of granting the request, the court ordered Su to submit a brief by May 28 and ordered Mar-Jac to submit a response to the brief by June 4, the release said.
What Mar-Jac says about the child labor accusations
In a response filed May 8, Mar-Jac contends it offered to stop shipping poultry produced on the May 1 shift, when the alleged child labor violations involving the four teens were uncovered by the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division.
However, the Wage and Hour Division “rejected that offer and demanded Mar-Jac not ship goods in interstate commerce for the next 30 days,” the filing says.
This would “would put more than 1000 workers out of their jobs for that 1-month period and disrupt the supply chain, adversely affecting hundreds more workers involved in growing and transporting poultry products,” Mar-Jac said in its news release.
Mar-Jac refused the division’s demand and argues that the company was unaware three of the four minor employees were underage.
According to the Labor Department, Wage and Hour Division investigators learned the four teens “had been working at the facility for months,” a complaint says.
The department has declared all chicken produced by Mar-Jac up until May 31 are “hot goods” that are “tainted by child labor,” according to the complaint.
Mar-Jac maintains three of the four teens showed documents that claimed they were older than 17 and were then verified as over 18, according to the May 8 court filing.
The company says it “immediately discharged” the three minors after learning they were underage and denied that they worked on the Alabama plant’s kill floor, the filing says.
As for the fourth minor, Mar-Jac said federal investigators haven’t identified the teen, “making it impossible for Mar-Jac to end the alleged (child labor) violation,” according to the filing.
On May 14, the Labor Department called Mar-Jac’s response a “misguided attempt to persuade this Court to allow (the company) to flout the inherent dangers of oppressive child labor,” court records show.
Mar-Jac said in the release that the company “will continue to vigorously defend itself and expects to prevail in this matter” and that it is “committed to complying with all relevant laws, including but not limited to the child labor regulations.”
Following the death of Perez at the Mississippi poultry plant, Mar-Jac acknowledged he “should not have been hired” because he was under 18, according to a July 19 news release published online by WDAM-TV.
The company said the employee’s age and identity “were misrepresented” on his hiring paperwork, according to the release.
Seth Hunter, an attorney representing Perez’s mother, who is suing over his death, said in a news release provided to McClatchy News in February that Mar-Jac’s “working conditions have to change.”
He said Chick-fil-A “is one of Mar-Jac’s largest customers” and that Chick-fil-A and other companies “should insist on better working conditions or stop doing business with them.”
At the time, Chick-fil-A didn’t respond to McClatchy News’ request for comment from Feb. 5.
A few months after Perez’s death, the company told NBC News in October that “We are reviewing our own procedures for investigation and response as we pursue the steps necessary to effectively hold all our suppliers to our high safety standards.”
Similar to Perez, a New York Times investigative report published in September found many migrant children and teens are working dangerous jobs, including at poultry plants.
Mar-Jac’s plant in Jasper, Alabama, is about a 240-mile drive west of the company’s headquarters in Gainesville, Georgia.
This story was originally published May 20, 2024 at 1:04 PM with the headline "‘Oppressive’ child labor found at poultry plant’s kill floor after teen’s death, feds say."
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