A 16-year-old employee who died after getting sucked into equipment at a Mississippi poultry plant got the job using the identity of a 32-year-old man, a new revelation that highlights the ease with which migrant children are finding work in a dangerous industry, and the challenges companies face in trying to evaluate their true ages.
Duvan Pérez, who was hired to clean up at Mar-Jac Poultry in Hattiesburg, which supplies chicken to companies like Chick-fil-A, died on July 14. Within hours of his death, questions about his true age were raised by a local Facebook news site, and he was soon determined to be 16.
It’s illegal for minors to work in slaughterhouses, which the Occupational Safety and Health Administration considers among the most perilous workplaces in the country.
The number of children working illegally has skyrocketed across all industries, according to the Labor Department, nearly doubling since 2019. More than 800 child labor investigations in 47 states are ongoing across industries, according to the agency.
That’s the thing I can’t get. In all cases with minors illegally working, they have a boss or supervisor. And they’re just fine with that? They take it in their stride instead of taking it to the press?
I honestly can’t fathom it because all the supervisors I’ve had, regardless of their strengths and weaknesses, genuinely cared about me as a person. It was the corpo suits and execs that didn’t give a shit.
Christ, they need to thoroughly investigate these companies, because this highly suggests there’s more wrongdoing to be found.
“It’s very hard to convince a man of something when his salary depends on him not understanding it.” - George Carlin
-Upton Sinclair