Additional Coverage:
- Investigators find 11 children working ‘dangerous’ overnight cleaning shift in meat processing plant (nbcnews.com)
Children Found Working at Iowa Meat Plant
Federal authorities have uncovered 11 underage workers employed at a meat processing plant in Sioux City, Iowa. Qvest LLC, a cleaning company, employed the children to clean hazardous equipment overnight from September 2019 to September 2023.
Qvest has been fined $171,000 for violating child labor laws. The company must also implement measures to prevent underage employment, such as hiring an outside firm to review its policies and establishing a hotline for whistleblower reports.
This is the second case of underage employment at the same plant. In May, Fayette Janitorial Services LLC paid nearly $650,000 for using minors to work at the plant and a Perdue Farms facility in Virginia.
The Labor Department has seen a surge in child labor violations in recent years, with over 4,000 children identified in 2024. The department attributes this partly to fraudulent documents used by underage workers.
Seaboard Triumph Foods, which operates the plant, denies any wrongdoing and claims to have had no knowledge of the children working there. The company has severed ties with Qvest and says it no longer uses their services.