Dozens Of Children Worked Slaughterhouse Graveyard Shifts According To Labor Department; Judge orders industrial cleaning firm to immediately halt 'oppressive child labor' nationwide after kids as young as 13 were found getting chemical burns working night shifts in Nebraska and Minnesota slaughterhouses

Dozens Of Children Worked Slaughterhouse Graveyard Shifts According To Labor Department:

A top sanitation company has been accused of employing at least 31 children to clean the killing floors of slaughterhouses during graveyard shifts - one as young as 13, according to the Department of Labor.

The company, Packers Sanitation Services, or PSSI (owned by Blackstone), is contracted to work at meatpacking facilities and slaughterhouses across the country. According to court documents filed Wednesday, the children were allegedly employed at three facilities in Nebraska and Minnesota, NBC News reports.

The company employs over 17,000 employees at more than 700 locations across the country, according to PSSI's website.

The investigation found that minors cleaned the killing floors and various machines — including meat and bone cutting saws and a grinding machine — during the graveyard shifts, according to the complaint.

PSSI employed at least a dozen 17-year-olds across the three slaughterhouses, fourteen 16-year-olds, three 15-year-olds, one 14-year-old and one 13-year-old, the complaint said. -NBC News

According to the complaint, an Aug. 24 investigation was launched after law enforcement officials were tipped off that the company may be employing children. Search warrants were executed at two plants owned by food processor JBS USA in Grand Island, Nebraska and Worthington, Minnesota - and at a poultry processing plant in Minnesota. --->READ MORE HERE

Judge orders industrial cleaning firm to immediately halt 'oppressive child labor' nationwide after kids as young as 13 were found getting chemical burns working night shifts in Nebraska and Minnesota slaughterhouses:

A judge has ordered a slaughterhouse cleaning firm to stop employing children at its hundreds of operations across the country, after youths as young as 13 were found getting chemical burns while toiling night shifts in meat packing plants.

Federal Judge John Gerrard of the District of Nebraska issued a temporary restraining order on Packers Sanitation Service (PSSI) and ordered the firm to cooperate with a Department of Labor probe into abuses.

Investigators found 31 children aged 13 to 17 working night shifts for PSSI at Turkey Valley Farms in Marshall, Minnesota, and plants owned by multibillion dollar food giant JBS in Grand Island, Nebraska, and Worthington, Minnesota.

The youths worked nights using powerful cleaning chemicals that burned their skin as they scrubbed slaughterhouse floors covered in fat and flesh and cleaned out hazardous animal carcass-cleaving machines, investigators say.

Judge Gerrard on Thursday ordered the firm to 'cease and refrain from employing oppressive child labor', and to stop 'destroying or disposing of any information or documents' related to the probe.

The company must also stop 'threatening employees from cooperating' with investigators and 'retaliating against any employees who participate in the investigation,' he added.

PSSI did not immediately answer DailyMail.com's request for comment. The company will have a chance to challenge the injunction at a hearing in the federal courthouse in Lincoln, Nebraska, on November 23.

The Department of Labor had asked the court to impose a restraining order on PSSI. In court papers, the department said the firm could well be working kids in dangerous conditions 'at its other 400 operations across the country'. --->READ MORE HERE

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