A cleaning company, Qvest LLC, was fined $171,000 for employing 11 children, under the age of 18, in a dangerous overnight shift at a meat processing plant in Iowa. The children were tasked with using corrosive cleaners to clean equipment at the plant, a violation of US law. Qvest must pay the fine and not engage in oppressive child labor as part of a court ruling. Seaboard Triumph Foods, the plant where the children were found working, stated it was not involved in the wrongdoing and has not used Qvest’s services for over a year. This is the second incident of child labor at the same plant, with Fayette Janitorial Services LLC also being caught employing minors earlier this year. Qvest must hire a third-party company to review its policies on underage employment and establish a whistleblower hotline. The US Department of Labor found violations involving more than 4,000 children in the past year, resulting in over $15 million in fines. Former head of the department’s Wage and Hour Division, Paul DeCamp, highlighted the issue of fraudulent workers using fake identification documents to obtain jobs in the industry. A previous NBC News investigation found instances of underage workers being hired in slaughterhouses and meat processing facilities, leading to tragic incidents like the death of 16-year-old Duvan Pérez.
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