Sioux City, Iowa (KTIV) – Another cleaning company has been fined thousands of dollars by the U.S. Department of Labor for employing children to clean Sioux City’s Seaboard Triumph Foods pork processing plant. Qvest LLC of Oklahoma was the cleaning contractor for the plant between September of 2019 and September of 2023.

The Labor Department says the first company fined for hiring minors, Fayette Janitorial Services of Tennessee, took over the contract from Qvest, and hired some of the same children Qvest had employed to clean the plant.

Court documents filed in the Northern District of Iowa show that Qvest will pay $171,919 in child labor civil money penalties, hire a third party to review and implement company policies to prevent the employment of children, and set up a process to report possible child labor law violations.

The Labor Department’s investigation found 11 children had been cleaning equipment in the packing plant, including saws used to cut the pork. Federal law prohibits children under age 18 from working in dangerous jobs like meat processing facilities.

In a statement released to KJAN on Dec. 3rd, 2024, Seaboard Triumph Foods Communications Manager Riley Kohn said:

“The legal filings against Qvest Sanitation by the Department of Labor (DOL) do not include any claims against Seaboard Triumph Foods (STF). STF did not employ any of the alleged individuals and has no evidence that any underage individuals accessed the plant. In addition, this vendor, who had express contractual requirements to follow all labor laws, has not been
present at the STF facility for more than a year, as the company’s sanitation needs are currently supported through an ongoing partnership with the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW).

“This situation underscores the problems facing employers throughout the country: individuals, including minors, obtaining jobs through their use of fraudulent identification documents, which are sophisticated enough to fool even the federal government’s E-Verify system. Businesses are victimized by this fraud,” notes Paul DeCamp, the former head of the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division, and counsel for STF.

“Safety, ethical practices, and compliance with regulations and industry standards are of paramount importance to STF. We expect the same from our vendors and partners, and we will not tolerate any vendor’s use of underage labor within our facility, and will also take measures to prevent fraud against our company.”