In a stark revelation of child labor violations, the Tennessee-based Fayette Janitorial Service LLC has agreed to pay a substantial fine of nearly $650,000 after a federal probe found the company illegally hired children as young as 13 to work overnight shifts cleaning dangerous meat processing equipment, as reported by USA Today. The U.S. Department of Labor has enforced a court-approved consent judgment demanding the sanitation firm adhere to child labor laws and employ a third party for oversight.

According to CBS19 News, Fayette Janitorial was found using minors in hazardous conditions to clean equipment where animals are slaughtered and rendered, including head splitters and jaw pullers with at least one 14-year-old suffering a severe injury in a Virginia plant, federal investigators uncovered an ongoing practice where children were still found working as recently as December. U.S. law distinctly forbids employment in such circumstances for those under the age of 18.

In an action signaling their disapproval of Fayette's practices, both Perdue Farms and Seaboard Triumph Foods terminated their contracts with the sanitation service some months back, a move underscored by the alarming statistics released by the Labor Department indicating that the instances of illegal child labor in the U.S. have surged by 88% since 2019, per Local Memphis.

"The Department of Labor is determined to stop our nation’s children from being exploited and endangered in jobs they should never have been near," Regional Solicitor Christine Heri declared, signaling a no-tolerance stance against such dangerous child labor practices, and despite this resolve a Fayette spokesperson claimed the company has a “zero-tolerance policy for minor labor,” reported CBS19 News the statement coming amidst a series of child labor abuses that have stained the nation's workforce landscape including the fatal incidents at a Mississippi poultry plant and a Wisconsin sawmill.

Under the terms of the legal agreement, Fayette will bring in a third-party consultant to ensure law adherence and establish a complaint hotline, thus recognizing the severity of the abuse and taking steps to address the systematic failure that allowed such a scenario to unfold where children were being utilized in roles that could compromise their safety and well-being at such formative ages.