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Over 100 kids illegally employed in hazardous jobs, contractor pays $1.5M fine

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Re: Over 100 kids illegally employed in hazardous jobs, contractor pays $1.5M fine

#21

Post by nostromo »

There are millions of undocumented workers in the US using fake identities to get jobs.

Both major parties support this system. Some Republican interests enjoy the access to dirt-cheap labor. Some Democratic interests want immigrants to be able to find jobs despite it being illegal to employ them.

So we end up with a system where employers have no easy way to verify that an employee is who they say they are and has a legal right to work any specific job.

This is such an easy problem to solve, but entrenched interests would rather we all play dumb and occasionally slap a business on the wrist when they get too far out of bounds.

I’d be curious where these kids end up after this. My guess is they will not end up in schools but will rather end up doing undocumented farm work.

Re: Over 100 kids illegally employed in hazardous jobs, contractor pays $1.5M fine

#24

Post by ericmcer »

lallysingh wrote: post #5
laweijfmvo wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$1.5M EACH

Each? It looks like total. $15k each, not much of a fine

The law doesn't seem to have much of a bite. I always assume something like illegally hiring minors or exploiting workers will be the end your business. Then it turns out to be a pretty manageable fine.

Same thing with selling alcohol to a minor, I figured getting caught doing that would mean humongous fines and revocation of your liquor license, but it is a $250 fine and 24 hours of community service.

Re: Over 100 kids illegally employed in hazardous jobs, contractor pays $1.5M fine

#26

Post by CharlesW »

wnevets wrote: post #23

On a related note Arkansas just rollback regulations to employ kids. If the past month is any indication of what happens when you rollback regulations there is no way this will end poorly for some of the kids.

(Think you may have meant, "no way this will not end poorly".)

Re: Over 100 kids illegally employed in hazardous jobs, contractor pays $1.5M fine

#28

Post by space_ghost »

mulmen wrote: post #10

I got my first job at 15. Is that no longer legal? Is the issue here the specific conditions?

Yes, it's the specific (hazardous) conditions involved. Teenagers can and are legally employed, but there's laws that control the allowed nature and scheduling of that employment. Young teens cleaning dangerous meat-processing equipment during nightshifts is several kinds of nope.

Re: Over 100 kids illegally employed in hazardous jobs, contractor pays $1.5M fine

#29

Post by twodave »

I'd never let any of my kids work in a meat processing facility. The danger element alone with combined with unpredictable children sounds like The Jungle just waiting to happen again. Still 100 kids out of all the employees seems like a really small fraction, to the point where I wonder if these kids were all related to employees.

I've got little sympathy for the company here, but seeing how scarce certain items are at the grocery store, how prices have risen and how difficult it is to secure labor for those jobs I can understand why they would have broken the rules even knowing they'd pay for it eventually, just to keep the wheels moving.

Re: Over 100 kids illegally employed in hazardous jobs, contractor pays $1.5M fine

#30

Post by gleenn »

oramit wrote: post #19

"Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, the department assessed PSSI $15,138 for each minor-aged employee who was employed in violation of the law. The amount is the maximum civil money penalty allowed by federal law." Wow, I knew that labor laws in the US were toothless but to have it spelled out like this is so depressing. A max penalty of ~15k per violation, just bravo team, bravo.

Is it $15k because the total penalty doesn't depend on the number of people and it's just $1.5M/100 kids so it happens to be $15k?
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