Feds allege another Minnesota meat plant illegally employed minors

A company manufacturing meat snacks in southwest Minnesota will pay federal authorities more than $30,000 to settle a case by the U.S. Labor Department accusing the firm of illegally employing teenage workers.

The Department of Labor alleged Memphis-based Monogram Meat Snacks violated federal labor laws by hiring two underage employees at its Chandler, Minn., plant, according to terms of a consent decree filed Friday.

Investigators say they discovered two teenagers who were illegally employed there during a March 28 visit to the plant, which employs 400 people and makes a variety of meat snacks, including refrigerated sausages.

"The secretary and defendants have agreed to resolve this matter," said the consent decree filed in federal court by Acting U.S. Labor Secretary Julie Su and signed by Monogram CEO Karl Schledwitz.

In a statement, the company wrote it has a zero-tolerance policy on employing underage labor and immediately fired the two workers, adding the teens appeared to have used "falsified documentation relating to their identity or age in the hiring process."

"We have voluntarily made significant and immediate companywide changes to our existing policies and procedures to prevent this from occurring in the future," according to the statement.

According to the decree, the company is operating under enhanced regulations, including the hiring of a compliance specialist to make sure no one younger than 18 is hired at any of its meat processing plants across the country.

Under federal law, although teenagers may work limited, daylight hours for a range of employers, they may not work at hazardous job sites, including slaughterhouses and meat processing centers.

The court document did not reveal the nature of the jobs held by the two underage employees, except that each of them, one younger than 18 and one younger than 16, were engaged in prohibited work.

Following word from federal authorities of the violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act, the company stopped shipping certain meat products produced at the plant on April 24.

Chandler sits in Murray County in Minnesota's southwestern corner, about 30 miles from the South Dakota border.

Court documents allege this was the latest recent instance of a child labor violation in the meat-packing industry.

In February, the Labor Department announced a Wisconsin-based janitorial service that cleans slaughterhouses would pay a $1.5 million fine for hiring more than 100 minors to work in dangerous, overnight conditions across the country, including in Minnesota at a turkey plant in Marshall and a large pork slaughterhouse in Worthington.