Senator Demands Tyson Child Labor Probe. Trump’s Cuts to DOL Could Make That Difficult.

Conor here: Sure seems like a case of “everything going according to plan.” As the following report notes, the Trump Department of Labor (DOL) says its Wage and Hour Division, who are responsible for investigating child labor, are exempt from the DOGE-inspired deferred resignation program. Even if they weren’t it’s difficult to imagine the situation getting much worse. As New York Times reported, under the Biden Administration the Wage and Hour Division was woefully understaffed and has been for ages:

The department has 750 investigators overseeing fair labor standards at 11 million workplaces, including 3,000 slaughterhouses. Even when inspectors do catch child-labor violations, the maximum penalty per child is $15,000, and they usually fine only the subcontracted companies, not the brands themselves. Lawmakers have been pushing to increase the maximum fine, but Congress is gridlocked, with each party drafting its own bills and refusing to vote for legislation introduced by the other side.

Despite rising child labor violations and new Senate demands to investigate the nation’s largest meat processor, the U.S. Department of Labor remains silent on whether it has the staff to conduct future probes amidst a major reduction in its workforce.

At a May 22 congressional hearing, newly appointed Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer said 2,700 department employees have taken a deferred resignation program offered to nearly all federal employees as a part of Trump administration-led staff reductions. However, she said enforcement staff with the Wage and Hour Division, who are responsible for investigating child labor, are exempt from the program.

“At the Department of Labor, our goal is to fully enforce the law and make sure that we are using the full enforcement capability of the Department of Labor to crack down if someone is knowingly breaking that law, and we will double down to do that,” Chavez-DeRemer said.

Federal agencies that enforce labor, environmental and agricultural laws have seen layoffs, budget cuts and attacks on federal workers in recent months under the Trump administration.

Jessica Looman, former administrator for the Wage and Hour Division under the Biden administration, said she worries ongoing cuts to staff and budgets will have a chilling effect on the division’s ability to carry out its work.

“Enforcing federal child labor laws is one of the most important things that the Wage and Hour Division of the U.S. Department of Labor does and it’s critical that they have the resources to be able to do that work,” Looman said in an interview with Investigate Midwest.

An excerpt from Sen. Josh Hawley’s letter to Labor Secretary Lori Chavez DeRemer, dated May 6, 2025. The letter in full is available to read below.

The Wage and Hour Division has roughly 1,400 full-time employees and a budget of $260 million as of fiscal year 2024, according to DOL budget documents and interviews with former staff. The agency has around 700 investigators tasked with enforcing federal child labor and other labor laws.

In its 2025 budget proposal under the Biden administration, the Wage and Hour Division requested 50 additional full-time employees to continue investigating child labor.

“Over the last decade, WHD enforcement capacity has decreased from more than 1,000 on-board investigators to just over 720 investigators — one of the lowest levels in fifty years,” the document states.

The DOL would not answer direct questions from Investigate Midwest about how federal budget cuts and deferred resignations have impacted the Wage and Hour Division, or how these changes would affect its ability to conduct child labor investigations.

An excerpt from DOL Acting Administrator Donald M. Harrison III’s response addressed to Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, dated May 12, 2025. The letter in full is available to read below.

The concerns over cuts to staff responsible for child labor investigations come as multiple senators are calling for more investigations into potential child labor in meatpacking plants.

This month, U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, a Republican from Missouri, sent a letter to DOL Secretary Chavez-DeRemer demanding an investigation into Tyson Foods, the nation’s largest poultry processing company. Hawley said he was contacted by a whistleblower who previously worked for the company and claimed to have seen underage workers at a processing plant employed by a third-party contracting service, as well as hearing from other coworkers that underage workers were working at the facility.

“They’re using child labor, they’re using illegal immigrant labor and they’re basically participating in an illegal human trafficking ring,” Hawley said in an interview with Investigate Midwest. “This has got to stop.”

Tyson Foods is still under investigation for the use of child labor at two of its facilities in Arkansas, according to a DOL statement from March. In a letter sent to Hawley, the Department of Labor confirmed the company is under investigation for child labor, but did not detail specific facilities.

“We do not allow the employment of anyone under the age of 18 in any of our facilities, and we do not facilitate, excuse, or in any other way participate in the use of child labor by third parties,” a Tyson spokesperson said in a statement to Investigate Midwest.

Hawley and Democratic New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker reintroduced legislation in March to prevent companies with child labor violations from obtaining federal contracts and funding.

Nearly half of all child labor violations in the past two decades have come from agriculture industries, with the number of child labor violations increasing 35% in the past 10 years, according to DOL data.

While crop production accounts for most of these violations, major meatpacking companies, such as Tyson Foods, JBS USA, Perdue Farms, Cargill and Mar-Jac Poultry have been fined and investigated for violating federal child labor laws in the past decade.

chart visualization

In 2023, the Wage and Hour Division announced that Packers Sanitation Service, a company formerly based out of Wisconsin and now headquartered in Atlanta, employed more than 100 children – ages 13 to 17 – at 13 meatpacking plants across the country. The company was fined $1.5 million for child labor law violations.

Some Worry Trump’s Cuts Could Harm Future Enforcement Efforts

“With cuts going on in the Trump administration, we certainly have a fear that there’s going to be even less capacity and less appetite for enforcing child labor laws,” said Todd Larson, co-executive director for environmental and labor advocacy group GreenPeace, part of a coalition working to prevent child labor in meatpacking and food processing..

While it’s unclear how child labor in the U.S. will be affected by federal cuts, international enforcement already has seen an impact.

The quasi-governmental Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, cut $240 million in funding for the Department of Labor’s International Labor Affairs Bureau in March, according to POLITICO. The office investigates global use of child labor in supply chains, as well as labor performed under human trafficking or coercion.

In a letter to the DOL, Democratic members of the House Ways and Means Subcommittee called on the agency to reinstate funding to the bureau to prevent goods made under child labor conditions from entering the country’s supply chain and competing with the U.S. labor force.

“American trade policy relies on critical federal programs working overseas to challenge unfair competition from governments that commit egregious abuses in global supply chains,” the letter states. “By eliminating these and other technical assistance projects, the Administration is surrendering an essential tool for leveling the playing field and holding our trade partners accountable.”

 

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7 comments

  1. Deb Schultz

    When I lived in southern Delaware, I volunteered for a school program for unaccompanied minor children, immigrants mostly from Central America who ostensibly had some family they were living with there in Sussex County. These kids were teenagers. Most of them spoke a native language with Spanish as their second language. They were supposedly being instructed in English and math in an effort to get them ready for entry into regular classes.

    I realized many of these kids were exhausted and it turned out that quite a few of them were working evening or night shifts at the many poultry plants that dot southern Delaware. No one I spoke to about this seemed too concerned. I really did not know what to do. The general attitude was that it was a great big favor to let these kids in in the first place.

    It was criminal, really.

    I also volunteered with the DACA program run out of Delaware State University at that time. We gave several kids a place to stay and we went to the university science expo to see “our” kids’ presentations. All those kids wanted to become doctors or scientists. They worked so hard. I don’t know what has become of most of them.

    What we have done to these families and their children is unspeakably cruel.

    Reply
    1. Carolinian

      immigrants mostly from Central America

      Thank you and exactly. The child labor is merely a subset of the elephant in the room which is the dependence of agricultural interests on exploitable undocumented labor. We are back to Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, another Gilded Age landmark, which of course was about Chicago meatpacking. Only this bit of economic time travel was going on long before Trump or Biden–perhaps never stopped. One of my uncles ran an orchard that brought in immigrants to do the picking once ripe.

      It is said that when The Jungle came out the country was less shocked by the exploitation as by the tales of unsanitary conditions at the slaughter houses. Reform happened, but where are the new muckrakers to bring conditions to light?

      Reply
    2. jobs

      This “general attitude” shows how normalized this kind of cruel exploitation has become in the US. Plus few seem to care that these people being here in the first place is connected to the US interfering with their home countries.

      It’s all so infuriatingly rotten. The US is not the good guy helping people out here, far from it.

      Reply
  2. lyman alpha blob

    Good for Hawley I suppose, but this has been going on with a wink and a nod for decades now. If we are truly concerned about illegal immigration, there’s one way to stop it – start hauling the CEOs of companies who knowingly hire illegal immigrants to keep labor costs down right off to prison, and keep them there. When the DOL was fully staffed, or at least staffed better, how many times did this happen?

    If there are to be no consequences, then what’s the point of having these probes in the first place? So senators can virtue signal? I do believe we should have a robust DOL that protects workers’ rights. But if we aren’t going to have that, what’s the point of keeping a Potemkin DOL around?

    Reply
  3. larry motuz

    Quote: “In 2023, the Wage and Hour Division announced that Packers Sanitation Service, a company formerly based out of Wisconsin and now headquartered in Atlanta, employed more than 100 children – ages 13 to 17 – at 13 meatpacking plants across the country. The company was fined $1.5 million for child labor law violations.”

    If the officials at those 13 meatpacking plants are not charged, then those plants will continue to use outside labor contractors to get around the law.

    Reply

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