Child labor violations announced at Iowa plant

Omaha World-Herald

August 5, 2008

DES MOINES (AP) - The Iowa Labor Commissioner's Office announced Tuesday that it has uncovered dozens of child labor violations at the Agriprocessors kosher meatpacking plant in Postville.

Labor officials said their investigation, which spanned several months, had uncovered 57 cases of child labor law violations.

The types of violations included minors working in prohibited occupations, exceeding allowable hours for youth to work, failure to obtain work permits, exposure to hazardous chemicals and working with prohibited tools.

"The investigation brings to light egregious violations of virtually every aspect of Iowa's child labor laws," Dave Neil, Iowa Labor Commissioner, said in a statement. "It is my recommendation that the attorney general's office prosecute these violations to the fullest extent of the law."

Labor officials say the child labor violations would normally be turned over to the county attorney's office, but in this case will most likely be handed over the Iowa attorney general. A telephone message left for the attorney general's office Tuesday afternoon wasn't immediately returned.

State labor officials say they are still investigating some wage violations at the plant.

Agents arrested 389 workers in a May 12 raid at the Agriprocessors plant. That made it the largest immigration enforcement operation in U.S. history.

Trials were quickly held about 70 miles away at a fairgrounds in Waterloo, where most of the arrested workers pleaded guilty within a week. They are serving sentences in federal prisons outside Iowa before being deported.

Neil told The Associated Press that the child labor investigation presented challenges.

"It was a very difficult investigation for our employees due to the language barriers and the difficulty in obtaining statements from underage employees," he said.

A spokeswoman for Iowa Workforce Development, the agency that oversees the labor commission, said the number of violations is much larger than what is typically found in the state of Iowa.

"Typically, when we have child labor issues it's an issue of one or two individuals," said spokeswoman Kerry Koonce. "From our point of view, with this investigation, it's a large-scale violation of the law."

Koonce said the full report was not being made public because it is a part of a criminal investigation.

Juda Engelmayer, an Agriprocessors spokesman, declined immediate comment.

The company also operates a plant near Gordon, Neb.

Allegations of child labor violations were included in an initial affidavit and a search warrant that led to the raid at Agriprocessors.

Under Iowa law, it is illegal for children under the age of 18 to work in meatpacking plants.

Several underage workers who said they were employed at the plant have spoken out since the raid about their experiences.

At a town hall meeting with members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus last month in Postville, Noel Castillo Ordonez, a shy-looking 17-year-old wearing a black hat emblazoned with a bald eagle and an American flag, said he'd worked long hours at the plant to support his family in Guatemala.

"I needed money for my family, because I could not help them," he said in Spanish.

At the same meeting, another teen, Gilda Yolanda Ordonez Lopez, openly wept as she described being forced to work shifts as long as 12 hours with no overtime pay.

"They asked me how old I was, and I told them the truth," said Lopez, 17.

Sister Mary McCauley of St. Bridget's Catholic Church in Postville has been working closely with the workers' families. She said she was "heartsick" over the stories of child labor violations that she heard after the raid.

"My first response is it doesn't surprise me because of all that I have heard," she said Tuesday. "Therefore, I am grateful that this was brought to the attention of the proper authority and my hope would be that some sanctions would be taken because I do think that these young children were not treated with respect and they should not have been there in the first place."

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