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Confronted With Child Labor in the U.S., Companies Move to Crack Down [1]

['Hannah Dreier']

Date: 2024-02-07  

Many major U.S. companies — including some of the country’s biggest consumer brands — say they are taking steps to eliminate child labor in their domestic supply chains amid revelations that children are working throughout American manufacturing and food production.

As hundreds of thousands of migrant children have crossed the southern border without their parents since 2021, growing numbers have ended up in dangerous, illegal jobs in every state, including in factories, slaughterhouses and industrial dairy farms, The New York Times has reported in a series of articles.

Working to exhaustion, children have been crushed by construction equipment, gotten yanked into industrial machinery and fallen to their deaths from rooftops.

Now, McDonald’s says it is requiring private inspectors to review overnight shifts at slaughterhouses that provide some of its meat, where children as young as 13 were cleaning heavy machinery. Suppliers for Ford Motor Company must now scrutinize the faces of employees when they arrive for work. Costco is commissioning more audits with Spanish-speaking inspectors.

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[1] Url: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/07/us/child-labor-us-companies.html?partner=slack&smid=sl-share

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