Mississippi: Boy, 16, dies in work accident at Hattiesburg poultry plant – National & International News – WED 19Jul2023

Guatemalan boy, 16, dies in work accident at Hattiesburg poultry plant

Concerns for US soldier who crossed into North Korea.

NATIONAL NEWS

Mississippi: Boy, 16, dies in work accident at Hattiesburg poultry plant

A 16-year-old boy, identified by family members as Duvan Tomas Perez, died last week in a workplace accident at the Mar-Jac poultry plant in Hattiesburg. A statement from the company says that Perez was performing “sanitation operations” when the incident occurred at about 8 p.m. last Friday.

Another employee who was on duty at the time says he heard Perez scream twice for help, but “I knew he had died”.

Perez was from Guatemala and had been living in the US for six years and was attending a local middle school. A family member described him as “generous, smiley and very fun and very responsible at work”.

Hattiesburg police, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), and the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division are investigating the accident and probing why Perez was permitted to work at Mar-Jac despite being underage. The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 prohibits minors to work in dangerous work environments like poultry plants.

Mar-Jac’s “Horrible safety record”

Mar-Jac has a “horrible safety record”, according to Debbie Berkowitz, a former OSHA official. Berkowitz also says Mar-Jac “fought to prevent OSHA from looking for safety violations after previous serious injuries.”

The factory has seen two other employee deaths and an amputation in the last three years, earning them over $50,000 in fines from OSHA. A 33-year-old man died a machinery-related accident in 2020, as did another man, 48, in 2021. Mar-Jac has contested the $27,306 fine over the 2021 death and the case is still ongoing.

Child labor violations on the rise

In 2022 alone, child labor violations across the US rose 37% over the previous year, and had risen by 283% since 2015. Immigrant children are especially vulnerable to exploitation. In the past 2 years, more than 260,000 unaccompanied minors have been released into the US, nearly half of them from Guatemala. The Department of Homeland Security is investigating whether the migrant children were forced into work to repay human traffickers that brought them to the US. Some believe that the children are being trafficked into the US expressly as a source of low-age labor for dangerous jobs.

Last year, the Department of Labor began an investigation of Packers Sanitation Services Inc. (PSSI), a subcontractor that provides cleaning services for major meatpacking companies like JBS. The Department found PSSI had more than 100 children working at 13 meatpacking plants in 8 states, some as young as 13. PSSI claims that they have rigorous procedures to verify whether a worker is eligible for work and says they were fooled by fake IDs showing the children were over 18. However, pictures of some of these kids show they were clearly young children. PSSI paid more than $1.5 million in civil penalties for violations child labor laws.

Related: 14 states that have introduced bills to allow children as young as 14 to work in dangerous jobs

INTERNATIONAL NEWS

Concerns for US soldier who crossed into North Korea

Yesterday, 23-year-old Private 2nd Class Travis King of Racine, WI, crossed willingly over the border from South Korea into North Korea. King’s intentions or state-of-mind when he crossed the border are unclear, as is his fate. But US officials seem to be doing puzzlingly little to secure his safe return.

According to family members, King had been in serious mental distress in the weeks before he fled into North Korea. King’s uncle told The Daily Beast that King’s 7-year-old cousin had recently died from a cruel illness. The uncle said that after the boy’s death, King became “reckless”. Just days before King crossed the border, he’d been in detention in South Korea. Reports say King had gotten in a fight in a nightclub and then repeatedly kicked a police vehicle while screaming profanities.

When his detention ended, King remained in Seoul under “military observation”. He was then was to return to the US, likely to face further disciplinary action. Military police escorted King to the airport, but were not allowed to escort him all the way to his gate. At the gate, King reported his passport was missing and an agent escorted him out of the terminal.

Shortly thereafter, King joined a guided tour of the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). During the tour, he broke away from his group. He then sprinted over the border, laughing out loud as he went, according to witnesses.

Despite the fact that King was obviously under some mental strain, US officials are treating King’s action as a defection. A State Department official says the department “has not reached out to the North Koreans or other governments” on the matter.

The US has no formal diplomatic relations with North Korea. However, one can’t help but compare the apparent inaction by the State Department in King’s case with the massive efforts to secure the return of American student Otto Warmbier in 2018.

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