16-year-old still works at Kansas slaughterhouse after employer fined for hiring kids: NBC News

NEW YORK, April 13 (Xinhua) -- When the U.S. Labor Department discovered over 100 migrant children cleaning Midwest slaughterhouses in February, their employer Packers Sanitation Services Inc. (PSSI) paid 1.5 million U.S. dollars of fine, agreed to stop employing children, and, according to PSSI and employees who spoke to NBC News, quickly fired all workers found to be underage.

But a 16-year-old named Pedro said he's still cleaning blood and animal parts off the kill floor of a Kansas slaughterhouse up to seven nights a week, a job illegal for anyone younger than 18 under U.S. labor law, NBC News reported on Wednesday.

From 11 p.m. to 6 a.m., Pedro is responsible for hauling away animal parts in a cart, scrubbing blood off the floor and cleaning machines with harsh chemicals, according to the report.

"Although the job is hard, dangerous and tiring, he fears losing his paycheck would put him and his family in Guatemala in an impossible situation. Pedro said he used a false identity to get the job," said the report.

Pastor Joel David Tuchez was quoted as saying that he knows of more than a dozen children, who are mainly Guatemalan, in his community in Kansas who worked for PSSI cleaning slaughterhouses at night.

Now, as a result of the Labor Department investigation, most of those children have lost their jobs at PSSI, the report said.

PSSI, which is owned by the private-equity group Blackstone, has previously said it requires all new hires to present identification that it runs through the government's E-Verify system and that some employees present false or stolen IDs, it noted.

In a statement, Blackstone said, "PSSI has been crystal clear that it has a zero-tolerance policy against employing anyone under 18 and is committed to taking action in instances when false identification documents are used to circumvent their extensive hiring procedures."