Corporations Are People, My Friend
Desperate for the perfect Christmas gift for the thirteen-to-seventeen-year-olds in your life?
Fear not!
The folks at Packers Sanitation Services, Inc. (PSSI), who, according to the US Department of Labor, have employed at least thirty-one children to clean power-driven machines, including meat and bone cutters, at slaughtering and meat packing establishments in Worthington and Marshall, Minnesota and Grand Island, Nebraska, have already “teenager tested” their list of “must haves,” including:
meat patty forming machines
meat and bone cutting saws
head splitters, and guillotine cutters
snout-pullers and jaw-pullers
skinning machines
casing-cleaning machines, including crushing, stripping, and finishing machines
grinding, mixing, chopping, and hashing machines and presses
And there’s no need to worry about pesky things like parental warnings that these gifts “might be dangerous.” They come with a guarantee that they are dangerous.
In fact, in a complaint filed on Wednesday, November 10, the US DoL, acting on a credible tip, accused PSSI of employing at least 31children as young as thirteen in “dangerous” overnight shifts on the “kill floor” – where cattle are butchered - at a plant operated by JBS Foods in Grand Island.
According to the company’s website, PSSI is a nationwide hiring agent, recruiting 17,000 local workers to sanitize industrial plants – often in overnight shifts. Jobs includes “work with and around dangerous machinery” and use of “strong chemicals.” In addition to the Grand Island facility, PSSI recruited nightshift kids to work at JBS Foods in Worthington and Turkey Valley Farms in Marshall.
All of the minors were Spanish speakers and, while the federal complaint did not identify the teens, the filing listed working hours far exceeding what is permitted under federal law.
The 1938 Fair Standards and Labor Act bars minors under fourteen from working. Teens between 14- and 15-years-old are not permitted to work past 9:00 p.m. in the summer and 7:00 p.m. during the school year; kids 16 and older are still banned from working more than three hours on a school day and more than 18 hours a week; regardless of age, they may not operate or work around “hazardous” equipment.
According to the federal complaint, a 14-year-old student at Walmut Middle School in Grand Island, Nebraska was working from 11:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m. five to six days a week between December 2021 and April 2022. DoL investigators matched workers’ IDs with the teens’ school IDs and the federal complaint alleges at least one student regularly fell asleep in class or missed school because of a chemical injury he sustained at a Grand Island plant.
The mission of the Private Equity Stakeholder Project is “to identify, engage, and connect stakeholders affected by private equity with the goal of engaging investors and empowering communities, working families, and other private equity investments.” In March 2022, the organization reported three PSSI workers have died on the job since 2018, including one who was decapitated cleaning a chicken chiller; four other workers’ injuries resulted in amputations.
The federal reported noted “children as young as 13 years-old [were] seen cleaning machines with names such as “Heavy Duty Head Splitter,” “Hock Cutter/Deboner” and “Dominator Mixer/Grinder” - a 125 horsepower behemoth that can grind 36,000 pounds of meat per hour.
In gut-wrenching detail, the Department of Labor complaint vividly describes the situations in which 13- to 16-year-old kids were working. [We’ve deleted the legal citations.]:
…the running of machines made the area extremely noisy, with steam from hot water limiting visibility… “[I]t was steamy, loud, and wet... Scrap meats, fats, and oils covered handrails and the floor, making surfaces slippery… WHD [The Wage and Hour Division of the Department of Labor] Investigators saw PSSI employees working in standing water in a mixture of floating meat parts and soap… One area of the Grand Island kill floor appeared to have cow fat all over the ground… WHD documented PSSI employees using high-pressure washers, nozzles, detergents, scrub pads, and buckets to clean… At the Grand Island facility, the WHD Investigators observed employees pouring heavy-duty highly caustic cleaner KC-568, containing 12.5% of Sodium Hypochlorite, into large containers… and cleaning the preslaughter handling, stunning, and slaughtering equipment with hoses, steaming hot water, and cleaning liquids… Interviews confirmed PSSI employees, including minors, suffered serious chemical burns from using these cleaners… … interviewed worker suffered chemical burns on their face… 13-year-old PSSI employee, suffered serious burns.
The WHD report also listed “a sampling” of “the types of machines cleaned by the PSSI teenage workers…,” including [again, citations are deleted for space]:
… Millard Heavy Duty Head Splitter, which according to the manufacturer’s website, is “designed with a hydraulically powered cylinder to enable” an operator to “swiftly and cleanly drive the blade through the cradled head” of an animal...
• Jarvis Buster IV electrically powered bandsaw, a 190-pound saw used to split cow carcasses in half length-wise…
• Jarvis Hydraulic Brisket Saw, which according to the manufacturer’s website, the 5- horsepower, forty-pound saw “[c]uts fat cattle briskets in 3 seconds per carcass”.
• IMS Side Puller and Down Puller, which rip the hides from the carcasses.
• Jarvis Hock Cutter/Dehorner, described on the manufacturer’s website as “[u]sed for front and hind beef hock cutting through the bone or joint. Also an effective beef dehorner.”
WHD Investigators at the Grand Island facility toured the kill floor section where animals are hung by the legs and the skin and head is removed, including the “the blood dropper”, which, as one PSSI manager explained, is “where the blood is released from the cow.”
All except two areas on Fabrication side of the Grand Island facility contained machines that constitute meat and bone cutting saws, meat slicers, knives, or grinding, machines. …
• Rose meat puller – This machine pulls meat cut from a muscle that spans from the chuck to the flank of the carcasses.
• Grasselli skinners – This machine skins fat from the carcass.
• Kidney fat puller – This machine pulls fat away from the kidneys.
• Jarvis Buster V – This 196-pound saw is used for “splitting fat cattle, bulls, oxen, and horses” (per the manufacturer’s website)
• Various meat bandsaws manufactured by Butcher Boy, including several that cut “4000 FPM” (feet per minute) and have 7.5 horsepower motors.
• Cozzini Prime Mix Mixer/Blender, which can grind up to 15,000 pounds of raw meat.
• Weiler Dominator Mixer/Grinder, which has 125 horsepower grander motor and has a grind rate of 36,000 pounds per hour.
And the list goes on.
Unhappily, however, that does not seem to be the end of what many people of conscience might consider PSSI violations of human dignity.
The federal citation also described the efforts of PSSI mangers to interfere with the WHD investigation: attempting to intimidate groups of teenage workers who were being interviewed by using the supervisor’s size and age; hovering closely over the teens and investigators during their interviews; repeatedly texting workers during the course of interviews; and limiting/cutting short the amount of time workers could speak with the investigators. Finally, PSSI managers appeared to try and hide or delete records. According to the federal filing:
In summary, PSSI is employing, or has employed, at least twelve 17-year-olds, fourteen 16-year-olds, three 15-year-olds, one 14-year-old, and one 13-year-old across three slaughterhouses/meat processing facilities. WHD’s investigations have established that many… if not all of these children were employed in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act… Indeed, the Supreme Court has long recognized the employment of oppressive child labor in violation of the FLSA results in “crippling effects” that interfere with the “well-rounded growth of young people into full maturity as citizens.”
… the undisputed evidence will show Defendant employed oppressive child labor by suffering or permitting minors to work in the middle of the night, using hazardous chemicals to clean the power-driven slaughterhouse machines and otherwise working on the kill floor… a child as young as 13-years-old – so young they are not lawfully permitted to work for this employer – worked on the kill floor. Additionally, there were four other children under the age of 16 who worked the overnight shift; again, on its face, these are violations of the Department’s regulations. As for the twenty-six (26) children ages 16 and 17-years-old, the Secretary has ample evidence to show they worked on the kill floor and/or… around power-driven machines… Thus, the aforementioned facts alone suffice to establish a violation of FLSA… In short, the evidence demonstrates that Defendant employed oppressive child labor….
PPSI, founded in 1973, is no saint.
In July 2021, the USS Department of Labor and Occupational Safety and Health Administration charged PPSI and three other companies in connection with a nitrogen leak in a Georgia poultry processing plant that killed six workers and injured almost a dozen.
PPSI has been acquired by four different private equity firms since 2007; they have extracted hundreds of millions – adding debt and collecting dividends. In May 2018, The Blackstone Group bought PSSI for an undisclosed amount. Blackstone and Leonard Green/Alpnvest extracted hundreds of millions of dollars from PSSI through dividend recapitalizations, in which the private equity firms added debt to Packers Sanitation’s balance sheet in order to collect dividends for themselves.
OSHA data reported in 2017 indicated PPSI stood out as a particularly dangerous workplace with one of the highest numbers of serious injuries compared to its relatively low number of employees
Many workers in the sanitation industry are migrants or have criminal records – limiting their employment opportunities. Such vulnerable workers, including new immigrants, are less likely to challenge an employer that disregards safety issues or practices wage theft.
Barely eleven years ago, a GOP presidential hopeful visited the Iowa State Fair and was heckled by folks angry at his declaration that he would not raise taxes on the wealthy to help fund programs such as Social Security and Medicate.
When a protester shouted “Corporations,” apparently urging the candidate to raise taxes on corporations that have benefited from loopholes in the tax code, would-be candidate Mitt Romney responded, “Corporations are people, my friend.”
As members of the audience shouted, “No they’re not,” the wanna-be-president, who, according to The Salt Lake Times on December 17, 2021 has “amassed only the seventh-largest fortune among the 535 members of Congress” and his “wealth is estimated to be just north of $85 million,” retorted, “Of course they are. Everything corporations earn ultimately goes to people. Where do you think it comes from.”
Some translations of Gospel of Luke 14:19 read “Suffer the little children to come to me.” It’s nice to believe – and accept – other translations that read “Let the little children come to me.”
We can only guess that the “corporations [who] are people” prefer to make kids suffer – working night shifts around dangerous machines, experiencing chemical burns, being threatened by work supervisors and, of course, if they are working in the United States without proper documentation, being arrested and forcibly returned to countries from which they escaped rape, gang violence, drug dealing and the threat of death in pursuit of the American dream.
But we are certain that the big bosses with the big pay checks at PPSI and JBS Live Pork, LLC in Worthington, Minnesota and Turkey Valley Farms in Marshall, Minnesota
won’t be giving to their teenagers a Rose meat puller or Grasselli skinner or kidney fat puller for Christmas.
‘Cause, after all, “Corporations are people, my friend.” They’ll pay moderate fines – if the corporations are ever found guilty – and, just to be sure, the corporations – who are people – will have lawyers who will try to get those kids branded “illegal immigrants” and deported.