Tag Archive for: USDOL

U.S. DOL obtains order to force Los Angeles-area meat processor, staffing agency to give up $327,000 in profits from oppressive child labor

/in , , , , , , , , /by

USDOL News Release June 25, 2024

Investigation revealed children working dangerous jobs, unlawful hours

CITY OF INDUSTRY, CA – The U.S. Department of Labor has obtained a consent judgment in a federal court ordering a City of Industry meat processor and a Downey staffing agency to surrender $327,484 in illegal profits made from sales of products associated with oppressive, exploitative child labor. The judgment also requires the employers to pay the department $62,516 in penalties.

The June 20, 2024, judgment in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California in Los Angeles follows an investigation by the department’s Wage and Hour Division that determined A&J Meats and The Right Hire jointly employed and endangered children as young as 15 by tasking them to use sharp knives, allowing them to work inside freezers and coolers, and to scheduling them to work at times not permitted by law, all in violation of federal child labor regulations.

“A&J Meats and The Right Hire knowingly endangered these children’s safety and put their companies’ profits before the well-being of these minors,” said Western Regional Solicitor of Labor Marc Pilotin in San Francisco. “These employers egregiously violated federal law and now, both have learned about the serious consequences for those who so callously expose children to harm.”

Specifically, division investigators found that children worked at the facility more than three hours a day on school days, past 7 p.m. and more than 18 hours per week while school was in session. The Fair Labor Standards Act forbids employers from employing children under age of 18 in dangerous occupations, including most jobs in meat and poultry slaughtering, processing, rendering and packing establishments.

The judgment also forbids A&J Meats, owner Priscilla Helen Castillo, and The Right Hire staffing agency from future FLSA violations and from trying to trade goods connected to oppressive child labor. In addition, all three parties must also provide annual FLSA training for at least four years and submit to monitoring by an independent third-party for three years.

Castillo’s father, Tony Bran, has also been the found illegally employing children at three poultry processing companies he operates. In October 2023, the same California court ordered his companies to stop endangering children, withholding pay, retaliating, and shipping “hot goods” produced in violation of overtime and child labor laws.

“No employer should ever profit from exploited children,” said Wage and Hour Division Regional Administrator Ruben Rosalez in San Francisco. “When we find children employed in violation of the law, we will take steps to ensure that we can hold all employers accountable under the law. Companies that use staffing agencies to meet their labor needs cannot escape liability for child labor violations when they are in fact also employers themselves.”

The department encourages businesses to monitor their supply chains closely to make sure the goods they purchase, produce and sell are not made with oppressive and illegal child labor.

The department continues to combat child labor abuses and wage theft in the poultry and meat processing industries. This judgment follows numerous cases in California and nationwide where meat processing facilities were found illegally employing children and endangering their safety and wellbeing.

Learn more about the Wage and Hour Division, including a search tool to use if you think you may be owed back wages collected by the division. Workers and employers can call the division confidentially with questions or concerns – regardless of where they are from – and the department can speak with callers in more than 200 languages at its toll-free number, 1-866-4-US-WAGE (487-9243). Help ensure hours worked and pay are accurate by downloading the department’s Android and iOS Timesheet App for free in English or Spanish.

Agency
Wage and Hour Division
Date
June 25, 2024
Release Number
24-1107-SAN
Media Contact: Michael Petersen
Media Contact: Jose Carnevali
Share This
thumbnail

Seven Child Labor Best Practices for Employers from U.S. DOL

/in , , , , /by
From the U.S. Department of Labor….
Train Management

Train Management

Train supervisors and managers on child labor requirements. Our fact sheets provide guidance on nonagricultural occupations and farm jobs for young workers.

Distribute Resources

Distribute Resources

Provide child labor publications to all current and new workers under the age of 18. View our Young Worker Toolkit.

Build Trust

Build Trust

Establish an internal phone number that allows workers to report child labor violations anonymously. Let workers know that reporting violations will not lead to retaliation.

Provide Different Nametags

Provide Different Nametags

Provide workers under the age of 16 with a different color nametag than those worn by older workers. There are different hours and job rules for workers under 16.

Post Warnings

Post Warnings

Post information about child labor hours limitations in a conspicuous place. Read Fact Sheet #43 to learn more about these limits in nonagricultural occupations.

Use Signage

Use Signage

Place signage on equipment that 14- and 15-year-old workers are prohibited to use. Download and print this flyer.

Spotlight Hazards
[From https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/child-labor/seven-child-labor-best-practices-for-employers]

Spotlight Hazards

Post a “STOP” sticker on all the equipment that the Department of Labor considers hazardous for use by minors.

Child Labor Coalition lauds Wage and Hour’s child labor enforcement strategies that include creating a fund for victims and use of “hot goods” provisions

/in , , , , /by

March 27, 2024

Media contact: National Consumers League/Child Labor Coalition – Reid Maki, reidm@nclnet.org, (202) 207-2820

 

Washington, DC – The Child Labor Coalition (CLC), representing 37 groups engaged in the fight against domestic and global child labor, expresses support for the innovative enforcement strategies in this week’s enforcement action by the Wage and Hour Division of the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL). The action, announced March 25th, involved fines of $296,951 for a Tennessee parts manufacturer, Tuff Torq, and required the company to set aside $1.5 million as “disgorgement” of 30 days’ profit related to the company’s use of child labor. Disgorgement is a legal term for remedy requiring a party that profits from illegal activity to give up any profits that result from that activity.

Tuff Torq, which makes components for outdoor, power-equipment brands such as John Deere, Toro, and Yamaha, illegally employed 10 children, including a 14-year-old, for work that was hazardous—an identified task involved permitting a child to operate a power-driven-hoisting apparatus, which is a prohibited occupational task.

The Department employed several new or recent strategies in the case, including employing the Fair Labor Standards Act’s “hot goods” provision, which was used to stop the shipment of goods made with oppressive child labor.

“The use of the ‘hot goods’ enforcement tool is also an important new strategy, which Wage and Hour announced it would use last year,” said Reid Maki, director of Child Labor Advocacy for the National Consumers League (NCL) and the CLC. “It’s another critical tool in DOL’s arsenal. Once companies realize that the shipment of goods has been stopped, they feel an immediate impact of the violation.”

“This is the first use of victim’s fund that we have noticed in a child labor enforcement action,” added Maki. “Teens employed in factory settings are often unaccompanied minors and typically very impoverished. When enforcement agents find teens working illegally, they are dismissed with no resources to survive, move forward, and reassemble their lives. A victim’s fund is something the CLC and the Campaign to End US Child Labor – the CLC is a founding member – has touted as desperately needed.”

A third innovation involves how DOL calculates child labor fines. DOL recently announced it planned to change formulas for calculating fines, which previously had been capped at $15,000 per child involved in violations at a specific work site. The new strategy involves applying the maximum fines for each violation, not limited to the number of children involved.

“It’s clear they have used the new formula in the Tuff Torq fines,” said Maki. “Fines levels came in at an average of $30,000 per child—almost double what we would have seen under the old formula. With Congress unable, at this point, to pass into law any of several bills that would increase fines by a factor of ten, DOL’s creativity here is most welcome. Fines must be raised to inflict some real pain on corporate perpetrators. We’re not where we want to be yet, but it’s good to inch closer.”

“Wage and Hour also deserves praise for directing its enforcement action at Tuff Torq,” noted Maki. “In the past, corporations that benefited from child labor have often not been held accountable, as they blamed staffing agencies for illegal hires. Holding beneficiaries accountable is something DOL said it would do when it announced its meatpacking investigation results in February 2023—it’s great to see it happening.”

The Wage and Hour Division faces a big challenge in that its inspectorate, estimated at below 750 inspectors, is too small for a country the size of the U.S. The CLC has called for a doubling of the inspectorate over the next five years and is working to help increase congressional appropriations for that purpose.

Wage and Hour has noted a sharp increase in child labor in recent years, having found 5,792 minors working in violation of child labor laws. The Economic Policy Institute indicates the increase in violations is 300 percent since 2015.

“We are especially troubled by the prevalence of children in hazardous work,” said CLC Chair Sally Greenberg, who is also the CEO of the National Consumers League. “Far too many children are working illegally in meatpacking, auto supply factories, and other hazardous work sites. The U.S. can and must do more to protect these vulnerable children.”

###

thumbnail

Press Release: Schatz, Young Introduce New Legislation to Help Stop Child Labor

/in , , , , , , /by

[We’re sharing here a Press Release by Senator Schatz, 10/20/2023]

Schatz, Young Introduce New Legislation to Help Stop Child Labor

Bipartisan Bill Establishes New Criminal Penalties, Imposes New Steep Fines For Employers Who Violate Child Labor Laws

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senators Brian Schatz (D-Hawai‘i) and Todd Young (R-Ind.) this week introduced new legislation to help stop illegal child labor. The bipartisan Stop Child Labor Act would increase maximum fines for violations, establish new criminal penalties, allow victims harmed by violations to file private lawsuits, and encourage collaboration between employers and government to stop child labor violations before they occur.

“Right now, our laws are allowing some of the worst employers to get away with exploiting kids for labor with nothing more than weak fines,” said Senator Schatz. “Our bill will strengthen our child labor laws, hold bad employers accountable, and protect kids from this illicit practice.”

“Recent data shows that child labor exploitation is not a thing of the past or a problem limited to the developing world. This bipartisan bill would strengthen our nation’s labor laws to better protect our children,” said Senator Young.

This week, DOL released new data showing child labor violations at their highest level in two decades. In fiscal year 2023, violations soared to 5,792, an 88 percent increase from 2019. This is due to companies increasingly circumventing child labor laws to fill positions due to the tight labor market. Currently, the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) imposes weak fines for violations, making it financially easier for companies to skirt child labor laws. Earlier this year, it was revealed that migrant child labor is being used for hazardous jobs in factories making products for well-known brands like Cheetos, Fruit of the Loom, and Lucky Charms. In addition, DOL announced this year that it found more than 100 children across eight states cleaning dangerous meat processing equipment using hazardous chemicals for a contractor of major meat producer JBS Foods. While several child workers were injured on the job, DOL levied its maximum fine, just $15,138 for each count.

To stop child labor and hold bad employers accountable, the Stop Child Labor Act would:

  • Increase child labor violation civil penalties to:
    • $5,000 minimum – $132,270 maximum for routine violations;
    • $25,000 minimum – $601,150 maximum for each violation that causes the death or serious injury of a minor;
  • Create criminal penalties for a repeat or willful violation of child labor laws to include a fine of up to $50,000 and a year in jail;
  • Allow children harmed by violations of the law to seek compensation;
  • Start a grant program aimed at helping employers recognize, avoid, and prevent child labor violations; and
  • Permanently establish a National Advisory Committee on Child Labor.

The full text of the bill is available here.

[The BIPARTISAN  bill, number S.3051, was introduced on 10/17/2023 and has 1 cosponsors as of 11/9/2023 — Sen. Todd Young (R-IN)    Cosponsored on 10/17/2023]

thumbnail

Report Traces Goods Made with Child Labor to 76 Countries

/in , , /by

Of the products we use, wear, or consume every day, how many are made with child labor? Perhaps quite a few. A new report from the US Department of Labor identifies 148 different consumer goods produced with child or forced labor around the world. The list includes clothing, beef, sugar, bricks, coffee, and other products originating from 76 countries.

Gold tops the list. The report found that in at least 21 countries, children help mine gold, climbing into unstable shafts, carrying and crushing heavy loads of ore, and often using toxic mercury to process the gold. My colleagues and I have seen how dangerous this work can be, documenting the risks child miners face in Ghana, Philippines, Tanzania, and Mali.

Tobacco produced with child labor originates from at least 16 countries, placing it in the report’s top five. Child tobacco workers often labor in extreme heat, are exposed to dangerous pesticides, and risk nicotine poisoning from handling tobacco plants. In our investigations, children in the United States, Indonesia, and Zimbabwe have described nausea, vomiting, headaches, and dizziness while working in tobacco fields.

Governments, companies, and consumers share responsibility to end child labor. Governments should monitor and enforce their labor laws and provide children with good-quality, free education.

For children old enough to work, both governments and companies should ensure their jobs do not risk anyone’s health or safety. Companies should also monitor their supply chains, report on their efforts, and when child labor is found, transition these children to school or safe alternatives. Our report on the jewelry industry outlines steps companies should take.  

Consumers can ask retailers and manufacturers about their child labor policies and practices.

A young girl ties tobacco leaves onto sticks to prepare them for curing in East Lombok, West Nusa Tenggara.

A young girl ties tobacco leaves onto sticks to prepare them for curing in East Lombok, West Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia.

 © 2015 Marcus Bleasdale for Human Rights Watch

Ending child labor is possible. Since 2000, the number of children involved in it has dropped by a third ‒ from 245 million to 152 million. In the last two years, the Department of Labor found that 17 governments have made “significant” advancement in ending child labor, and another 60 have made “moderate” advancements. It noted particular progress in ending child labor in Panama’s sugar production, and cotton harvesting in Paraguay and Uzbekistan.

Still, we have a long way to go. Products that are part of our daily lives shouldn’t come at the expense of children’s health, safety, and education.


 
Jo Becker is the advocacy director of the Children’s Rights Division at Human Rights Watch, which is a member of the Child Labor Coalition.
thumbnail

46 Groups Ask Congressional Appropriators to Fully Fund USDOL’s Child Labor Program

/in , , /by

May 3, 2016

[This letter in support of ILAB funding was recently sent to appropriators Senator Roy Blunt and Senator Patty Murray, and Representatives Tom Cole and Rosa DeLauro on behalf of 46 organizations, representing tens of millions of Americans].

Dear Chairs and Ranking Members:

As the undersigned members of the NGO community and anti-child labor advocates, we write to urge you to ensure critical funding to end child labor and forced labor around the world.

Two 13 year old boys digging for gold in a mine in Mbeya region, Tanzania. (c) 2013

Two 13 year old boys digging for gold in a mine in Mbeya region, Tanzania. (c) 2013

 

The Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILAB) at the U.S. Department of Labor has worked for 20 years to reduce exploitative child labor, combat forced labor, and provide technical assistance to address worker rights in countries with which the United States has trade agreements or preference programs.

As you determine funding levels for Fiscal Year 2017, we ask that you restore ILAB’s child labor grant funding to $58.8 million (fiscal year 2015 levels) to ensure that ILAB’s critical work towards ending exploitative child labor continues. In addition, we ask that you approve $10 million for programs that address worker rights issues through technical assistance in countries with which the United States has free trade agreements or trade preference programs, and $9.5 million for program evaluation to continue the ensuring that ILAB’s work is grounded in the needs of vulnerable children and their families and that it continues to show results in prevention of child labor and labor rights violations.

Approximately 168 million children around the world are engaged in child labor and 85 million children perform hazardous work that threatens their health and development. Since 1995, ILAB has worked to build the capacity of governments and civil society to better address the various social and economic causes of child labor, and has provided direct services to almost 2 million vulnerable children and their families in over 90 countries. ILAB works with the public and private sectors to address child labor and forced labor, and promote fair and safe employment.

Through its holistic programming, ILAB works with international, government, and local actors to increase awareness, improve access to education, and develop economic opportunities for adults, allowing families to improve their livelihoods without relying on children for income to meet basic needs. Preventing and responding to child labor through such community-based approaches protects children from abuse, neglect, exploitation, and violence. Additionally, by identifying products made by forced labor and child labor and tracking the progress (or lack thereof) made by 125 countries to eliminate these practices, ILAB plays a critical role in driving advocacy to reduce these scourges.

Eliminating child labor is not only good for vulnerable children and families but it also supports U.S. businesses who are currently disadvantaged when they have to compete with businesses that cut costs by illegally employing children.

Read more

thumbnail

CLC PRESS RELEASE: Congress narrowly avoids shutdown of programs targeting child labor

/in , , , /by

85 million children are currently in dangerous, dirty, and degrading jobs; $53 million saved in budget deal to ensure children are protected from exploitative labor 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: December 17, 2015
MEDIA CONTACT: Reid Maki, Child Labor Coalition, (202) 207-2820, reidm@nclnet.org

Washington, DC—The Congressional budget package released today continues funding for programs to end child labor after the House and Senate voted to cut funding to the Department of Labor’s impactful and critical program in June 2015. The International Labor Affairs Bureau (ILAB) directs the U.S. Government’s efforts to end forced labor and child labor around the world. Advocates for protecting children from child labor are thankful for Congressional leadership.

“We are glad to see Congress putting actual funds to support their stated commitment to end the exploitation and abuse of children in the worst forms of child labor. The ILAB funding supports programs to help end and prevent the exploitation of children, said Melysa Sperber, Director the Alliance to Slavery and Trafficking (ATEST), “This bipartisan support is critical to keeping the U.S. as a global leader in ending the exploitation of men, women, and children in forced labor and exploitation.”

Currently 85 million children are in dangerous, dirty, and degrading jobs that prevent them from attending school, and are harmful to their physical, mental, and social development, known as hazardous child labor. Boys and girls work in many places including agriculture, mining, quarrying, fishing, factories, domestic work, and commercial sexual exploitation exposing them to harm. 5.5 million of these children are in forced labor.

“We are pleased that Congressional appropriators decided not to eliminate these highly effective child labor programs,” said Reid Maki, Director of Child Labor Advocacy for the National Consumers League and the coordinator of the Child Labor Coalition, representing 35 organizations. “Since 2000, nearly 80 million children have been removed from child labor. Child labor numbers have been reduced by one-third. The Department of Labor’s programs helped bring about these dramatic results and eliminating these programs would have meant turning back the clock to a time when the US government did little to help children escape the shackles of child slavery and the worst forms of child labor. Instead, we look forward to continuing progress in reducing these scourges.”

Read more

thumbnail

Child Labor Programs in Grave Danger

/in , /by

Despite great progress in reducing child labor, Congress is very close to cutting all of the Department of Labor’s funding for child labor grant programs. Both the House and Senate have proposed cuts in their budgets and advocates have responded loudly. Over the last 5 months advocates have sent emails to every Member of Congress telling them about the importance of these programs. We are now at a critical moment. Congress must agree on a budget before December 11th to avoid a government shutdown.

The next couple of weeks are critical for the U.S. fight to end child labor.

The final decisions around funding for the federal government for the coming year are being made right now and we need your voices more than ever in the fight to restore funding to protect children from harmful and exploitative child labor.  These decisions now rest with the highest levels of leadership in Congress and we need you to join us in contacting Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in particular to let him know that we will not accept cuts to crucial programs that protect children.  What might take you just 30 seconds, could mean all the difference in the life of a child!

Please use the following script to contact Senator McConnell (202-224-3135) :

I’m calling Senator McConnell to express my concern that the final appropriations package might not include critical funding at the Department of Labor that protects children.  The International Labor Affairs Bureau is America’s largest program to prevent and respond to child labor and has helped protect 1.94 million children from the worst forms of child labor. Please tell Senator McConnell that he must quickly restore ILAB funding or tens of thousands of children will be soon put at risk of the worst abuses of the labor market.  Thank you for taking my call and for passing my message along to the Senator.

thumbnail

Action Needed: Help Us Save the Progress on Child Labor that Has Been Made

/in , , , /by

[An important blog from CLC-member World Vision. A call to action appears further below]:

Action needed: An update from Cambodia on the fight against child labor.

We want to say thank you to our advocates. In addition to making phone calls and having meetings, you have sent over 15,000 emails to members of Congress asking that funding be restored to the International Labor Affairs Bureau (ILAB) for programs that help fight child labor. We are down to the eleventh hour for these programs — we now need your help to thank the champions as well as help remind key decision makers that these types of cuts will not go unnoticed. 

You are the reason Congress is still talking about theses programs, the reason these cuts have not gone unheeded. Jessica Bousquette shares from her recent trip to Cambodia, where she saw the positive effects of ILAB programs to help prevent child labor first hand. Then we share the two things you can do — in less than two minutes — to continue the fight for these programs. Your two minutes could change the life of a child.

By Jessica Bousquette

Around the houses perched on stilts, green rice shoots swayed gently in the wind and cars raced up the dirt road.  We sat on a blue tarp in a community near Siem Reap, a tourist hotspot in Cambodia famous for the World Heritage site Angkor Wat. As a toddler waddled between adults, I sat with a community group of about a dozen women and one man as they recounted how their life and their family’s lives had changed a result of being a part of a savings group.

The group has been working together for over a year to increase their savings through mutual support and accountability. With the savings, the group has been able to provide loans to members to expand their home businesses and agricultural productivity. When a member has an emergency, like an unexpected hospital visit, they can receive an emergency loan. This not only transforms their families’ access to income and nutrition, but also protects their children from hazardous labor. Oftentimes around the world, children end up working to pay off debts that arise when families cannot financially handle unexpected emergencies.

Read more

thumbnail

New app seeks to raise awareness of the worst forms of Child Labor and Forced Labor

/in , /by

 

USDOL app

 

 

The US Department of Labor recently released an exciting new tool to help consumers figure out if the products they purchase are made with child labor or forced labor.  The sheer size of the 2014 Findings on the Worst Forms of Child Labor produced by the Bureau of International Affairs (ILAB) highlights the reality of this problem – the hard copy version of the report is over 1,000 pages long and weighs in at over eight pounds. The International Labor Organization (ILO) estimates 168 million children globally are engaged in child labor, including 85 million in hazardous labor; 21 million people are trapped in forced labor, including 6 million children. Think of the DOL “Findings” report as a road map that tells us where children are working. It also includes vital information about how 140 countries are combating child labor.

On Wednesday 30th September ILAB launched their brand new app, ‘Sweat & Toil’ – now available from itunes and the App Store, which features the report data in a way that makes it much more accessible.  The app enables an individual to search by country name or product.  It includes a country specific review of the current laws and ratifications and the efforts by that country being made to eliminate child labor and assesses its progress. For example, a user can click on “Albania” and learn that the country made “moderate advancement” in dealing with child labor in 2014. By clicking on a statistics button, the user learns that 87.5 percent of child workers toil in agriculture in the country.  A user who clicks on “Brazil,” learns that the country has 16 products produced with exploitative labor, including 13 with child labor and four with forced labor – one of which is beef.

USDOL app photoConsumers purchasing a specific good can look it up to see if it is produced by child labor or forced labor – or both. Buying a bag of charcoal for your barbecue? The app would help consumers to know that production of charcoal involves child labor in Brazil and Uganda, and in Brazil it is produced with both forced labor and child labor. For consumers who care about the world and children who are exploited in global supply chains, this app could be addictive.

The broader aim is to empower the consumer to make intelligent decisions about the products we buy as well as persuade companies to examine their supply chains and identify where risks may be.

Let’s hope this user-friendly app, with its vast amount of current data on child labor and forced labor, will bring about a future where the consumer is highly conscientious and intentional in their consuming.

To download the app, search for “Sweat and Toil.” Readers can view online copies of the new updates of DOL child labor reports by clicking here.

Written by Contributing Writer Deborah Andrews and Reid Maki of the CLC staff.

 

CLC members—the Ramsay Merriam Fund, the American Federation of Teachers, and the National Education Association—made this web site possible through their generous support.

Quick Links

Useful Links

Contact Us