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Sep 30, 2023

US labor department releases photos of children working in slaughterhouse

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Disturbing photos show kids — some possibly as young as 13 — being put to work at a Nebraska slaughterhouse after being hired by a cleaning company owned by billionaire Stephen Schwarzman's buyout firm Blackstone, a Labor Department probe revealed.

The shocking images — released by the Labor Department during a segment on "60 Minutes" — show children wearing protective glasses, hard hats, gloves and water-wicking jackets while carrying buckets and other tools while working for Packers Sanitation Services Inc. (PSSI) at a meat processing plant in Grand Island, Neb.

The kids likely washed bloody floors and razor-sharp machines, like back saws, head splitters and brisket saws, with potent chemicals and hot water, an investigator for the federal agency told "60 Minutes" anchor Scott Pelley on Sunday.

The Labor Department launched its investigation into PSSI last August after a 14-year-old girl at Walnut Middle School in Grand Island came to school with acid burns on her hands and knees.

The ensuing probe found that the company hired 102 children between the ages of 13 and 17 among PSSI's thousands of workers at 13 meat-packing plants in eight different states.

"There was no way this was just a mistake, a clerical error, a handful of rogue individuals getting through. This was the standard operating procedure," Shannon Rebolledo, the Labor Department investigator who uncovered the abuse, told "60 Minutes."

In February, PSSI was ordered to pay $15,138 — the maximum civil money penalty — per underage child, totaling $1.5 million, according to the Department of Labor.

PSSI rakes in more than $1 billion a year as a leading slaughterhouse cleaning service, with 17,000 employees across 500 locations, according to its website.

It is owned by Blackstone — a giant private-equity firm headed by Schwarzman — which "claims to be a model of management," Pelley said.

PSSI and Blackstone both claimed on "60 Minutes" to have "no idea that they employed children in eight states."

Blackstone told The Post on Wednesday that "it stands unequivocally against child labor violations — which are fully opposed to our values and PSSI's own hiring policies."

It went on to say that "PSSI has an absolute zero-tolerance policy against employing anyone under the age of 18," and has implemented a "13-step remediation plan to address this issue."

The plan includes hiring a new CEO and "launching a charitable fund with an initial $10 million commitment dedicated to enhancing the well-being of children."

PSSI told The Post it has since fired "every single PSSI manager for the Grand Island plant," and banned them "from working at any other PSSI facility."

The company also pushed back at Rebolledo's assertion that using underage workers was standard operating procedure.

"The claim that this was standard operating procedure at PSSI is completely false," a PSSI spokesperson said.

The girl with the acid burns had told her teacher her injuries were from working shifts at a local slaughterhouse plant.

Teachers at her school also noticed other students falling asleep in class. It turned out their exhaustion was from working overnight at JBS plant, Rebolledo said on "60 Minutes."

JBS slaughterhouse "produces 5% of the beef in America," Pelley said, and "can butcher 6,000 cows a day."

Each night, PSSI workers — including children — occupied the massive plant from 11 p.m.-7 a.m. to clean it, he reported.

Rebodello's visit was the catalyst for an audit of PSSI, which revealed that it was "standard operating procedure" to employ minors as young as 13 for the overnight shift, she told Pelley on "60 Minutes."

"It seemed to be known within the community that minors either are or were working overnight shifts," Rebodello said.

The investigation revealed 102 minors employed by PSSI across multiple states.

"I believe that the number is likely much higher," Rebodello said.

It was previously revealed that one of the underage employees working at PSSI, known as Pedro, was actually a 21-year-old immigrant from Guatemala who used fake documents to cross the border and get a job with PSSI.

Pedro had posed as a 16-year-old, according to the Boston Herald, and got the job with PSSI using illegal documents despite the fact that the slaughterhouse sanitation company has used e-Verify for the past 20 years to confirm an employee's background information.

It was unclear if any of the 102 minors that were part of the Labor Department probe were illegal immigrants.