By Alan Guebert
Published: 5 days ago
U.S. federal labour experts estimate 73 percent of all U.S. agriculture business employees are immigrants and that half are "undocumented," or in the U.S. illegally. As such, it's likely that half or more of the food bought by Americans is picked, packed, milked, slaughtered, boxed or delivered by undocumented and sometimes, underage workers.
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Less than a month after the revelation that a Wisconsin-based contractor, Packers Sanitation Services, Inc. (PSSI) had illegally hired at least 102 teenagers between the ages of 13 and 17 to clean some of the nation’s most profitable industrial meat-packing plants, one middle school child at the centre of the story has, according to a March 3 Washington Post account, “watched her whole life unravel”:“First, she lost the job that burned and blistered her skin but paid her $19 per hour.”
Less than a month after the revelation that a Wisconsin-based contractor, Packers Sanitation Services, Inc. (PSSI) had illegally hired at least 102 teenagers between the ages of 13 and 17 to clean some of the nation’s most profitable industrial meat-packing plants, one middle school child at the centre of the story has, according to a March 3 Washington Post account, “watched her whole life unravel”:“First, she lost the job that burned and blistered her skin but paid her $19 per hour.”
“Then the county judge sent her stepfather to jail for driving her to work each night, a violation of child labour laws.”
“Her mother also faces jail time for securing the fake papers that got the child the job in the first place.”
Meanwhile, PSSI, the company that hired her and other children, “has faced no criminal charges, despite evidence that it failed to take basic steps to verify the age of its young employees.” It did, however, “quickly resolve” any charges it faced by “paying a US$1.5 million civil fine.”
That is the all too common side of today’s global food system: it operates on the ragged edge of the law. Most giant meat packers, despite their folksy corporate slogans and farm-friendly images, live on this edge.
For example, since 2020, two of the biggest, Tyson Foods and JBS, have paid nearly $800 million to settle either federal or civil suits for alleged labour and market violations.
Those costly settlements, however, haven’t hurt Big Meat’s ability to secure lucrative government contracts. Since 2017, JBS has been awarded nearly $500 million from the U.S. Department of Agriculture — $400 million in meat contracts and $90 million in China trade aid offered under former U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration.
This latest revelation about underage, illegal immigrant cleaning crews only spotlights meatpacking’s worst kept secret. U.S. federal labour experts estimate 73 percent of all U.S. agriculture business employees are immigrants and that half are “undocumented,” or in the U.S. illegally.
As such, it’s likely that half or more of the food bought by Americans is picked, packed, milked, slaughtered, boxed or delivered by undocumented and sometimes, underage workers.
That’s one of the darker aspects of America’s cheap, safe food supply: some of the biggest, richest ag companies often rely on powerless, illegal immigrant labour to do food’s dirty work because, as these companies often claim, no American will do it.
If true, the biggest part of the cure lies in the near-total control the large ag businesses hold over wages, benefits, harsh and dangerous working conditions, harassment, bullying, poor training, favouritism and other worksite shortfalls.
This corrupt-at-its-core system continues because agbiz and everyday Americans benefit from the abuse of desperate immigrant workers seeking to remain in the United States to somehow earn enough money to pay off debts that brought them and family members to the promised land — America.
That’s exactly what happened to one middle-schooler caught in the raid of the JBS beef plant in Grand Island, Nebraska.
Like most 13-year-olds, she wanted a job to buy “nice clothes and an iPhone 13” so she lied about her age and was hired by JBS’s cleaning contractor “to scour blood and beef fat from the slippery kill floor, using high-pressure hoses, scalding water and industrial foams and acids….”
PCCI, the contractor; JBS, the plant owner; and Blackstone, the $100-billion private equity fund that owns PCCI, all denied hiring underage workers.
But clearly they do, as proven by the 102 underage teenagers found cleaning slaughtering plants in eight states by the U.S. Department of Labor in raids last October.
And consumers, too, use underage workers, every time we buy a ribeye, pork loin, chicken breast, carrot, strawberry, head of lettuce or some other item that has travelled a crooked path to our local meat case or grocery shelf.
Which 13-year-old child, mother, grandfather, sister or son was abused, underpaid, threatened, hurt or fired so I could pay pennies less for that meat or vegetable?
If our politicians won’t fix this corrupt system, then our shame and courage should.
Alan Guebert is an agricultural commentator from Illinois.
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