An Oklahoma-based cleaning company has been fined nearly $172,000 after federal investigators found that it had hired nearly a dozen children to work dangerous overnight shifts at an Iowa slaughterhouse.
The 11 children were hired by Qvest Sanitation of Guymon, Okla., to work at a pork processing plant in Sioux City, Iowa, operated by Seaboard Triumph Foods, the Labor Department said. The children used corrosive cleaners to wash equipment, including head splitters, jaw pullers, band saws and neck clippers, the department said last week.
The department did not say how old the children were when they were working in the plant.
Adam Greer, Qvest’s vice president of operations, said in a statement that the company had not been able to confirm the allegations because the Labor Department “has declined to provide us with any names or specific information related to the alleged violations.”
“In spite of this, Qvest has not only fully cooperated with the Department of Labor but is and has been committed to strengthening our onboarding process,” he said.
It was the second time this year that a company that had been hired to clean the Seaboard Triumph Foods plant in Sioux City had been the target of enforcement action by the Labor Department.
In May, a Tennessee-based company, Fayette Janitorial Service, was ordered to pay $649,000 in civil penalties after an investigation found that it had hired at least two dozen children as young as 13 to work overnight shifts cleaning equipment at Seaboard’s Sioux City plant and a Perdue Farms plant on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. Nine of those children worked at the Seaboard plant, the Labor Department said.
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