Published: Nov 09, 2008 12:30 AM Modified: Nov 09, 2008 01:27 AM
Raid reveals underage workers
Ex-supervisors say poultry plants often hired young laborers

Lucero Gayton, 16, says she began work as a 15-year-old at a House of Raeford Farms chicken plant in Greenville, S.C.
Charlotte Observer Photo by John D. Simmons


Franco Ordonez and Ames Alexander, The Charlotte Observer


GREENVILLE, S.C. - Four months after turning 15, Lucero Gayton began work on the night shift at a House of Raeford Farms chicken plant.
Starting at 11 p.m., when most girls her age were asleep, the shy teenager with the brown eyes was working 10-hour shifts at the Greenville plant, wielding a sharp knife, cutting muscles from thousands of freshly killed chickens.

"I was scared that I'd cut my finger off," she said. "I did cut myself a few times."

Lucero lost her job last month in the largest immigration raid ever conducted in the Carolinas. She was one of six underage workers, ages 15 and 16, found among the 331 workers arrested at the plant.

Underage workers are a familiar sight on House of Raeford production lines, and not only in Greenville.

More than 20 current and former workers at three House of Raeford plants -- in Greenville, West Columbia, S.C., and Raeford told The Charlotte Observer that the poultry company frequently hired underage workers.

Six current and former supervisors said managers allowed the hiring in order to find cheap, compliant labor.

Because of the hazards, federal and state labor laws prohibit anyone under 18 from working on a poultry processing line.

Former supervisor Eric Lawson said that after he started at the company's West Columbia plant last year, a plant manager told him: "Most of [the workers] are illegal or underage. So they won't question anything."

Lawson was forced out of his job in April after arguments with his supervisors, he said.

In a February series on working conditions in the poultry industry, the Observer reported that House of Raeford had been cited for 130 workplace safety violations since 2000, among the most of any U.S. poultry company.

The Raeford-based company is one of the nation's top chicken and turkey producers, with about 6,000 employees and eight processing plants in the Carolinas and Louisiana.

After last month's raid, the U.S. Department of Labor launched an investigation into possible child labor violations.

Miguel Pascal, who got a job at House of Raeford's West Columbia plant when he was 15, described it as a perilous environment but an easy place to find work.

"Nobody asked me how old I was," he said.

In a written response Friday, House of Raeford said it follows the law. Every applicant must present identification showing they are 18 years of age or older. The company said it is required to accept documents that appear to be legitimate and prohibited from requesting additional documentation.

"Unfortunately, the documentation the employees present is not always genuine, or accurate, even if it appears to be," the company said. "Also, as we all know, not everyone tells the truth all the time."

Work in the U.S.

Lucero's father never wanted her to come to the United States. At least not until she was 18.

When Lucero called him from her mother's home in Oaxaca, Mexico, several months before making the trip across the desert, Tranquilino Gayton remembers telling her she wasn't allowed to come. He already lived in Greenville and periodically sent money home.

"You're too young," he said. "The trip is dangerous. Stay in school. You need to study."

But Lucero was determined to accompany her older sister, who had already received their father's permission. She knew of her family's financial problems. Her mother would sometimes cry when there wasn't enough money for food or medicine. Lucero wanted to help.

Lucero and her father argued for three weeks. She even threatened to move to another city if her father didn't welcome her in Greenville.

"I thought ... at least she will be with me," Gayton said.
"OK," he remembers saying. "You can come."

Lucero traveled from Mexico to the U.S. and then to Greenville with the help of smugglers in early 2007.

Hundreds of immigrants have taken a similar path to find work at House of Raeford plants. The company has had a reputation as an easy place for the undocumented to get jobs, many workers said.

When Lucero visited the Greenville plant, however, a woman behind the desk told her she was too young.

The staffer paused and then made a proposition, Lucero said.

"If you pay $300," Lucero recalled the woman saying, "I can change your birth date."

House of Raeford didn't address questions about the specific incident but did say it's illegal and against company policy to ask or require an applicant to pay to be hired. The company said it has fired human resources employees who it discovered selling jobs.

"If she [Lucero] submitted false documentation, then she has broken the law as well as company policy," the company said. "We have audited our I-9 records [employment eligibility forms] and are not aware that any employee who presented documentation showing that he or she was less than 18 years old at the time of hiring was given a job with the company."

Teen on the line

Lucero barely looks her age sitting on her living room couch. With her legs propped up, she twiddles her ponytail while talking about her friends from back home.

While most of her former classmates were playing sports, flirting with boys and attending dances, Lucero was pulling overnight shifts in a cold concrete factory, helping to turn thousands of birds into convenient cuts for restaurants, stores and cafeterias.

"I don't dance much here," she said

Lucero, now 16, worked at a plant, known locally as Columbia Farms, for about 18 months, first cutting muscles and then moving down the line to cut wings.

Working in a chicken factory is hard, dirty work.

Workers stand shoulder-to-shoulder, making as many as 20,000 cuts a shift.

With a knife in her right hand, Lucero cut at the chickens as fast as she could. The meat seemed to fly by.

The older women on the processing line at the House of Raeford Farms plant didn't have as much trouble, but Lucero was hampered by her adolescent muscles.

"The others kept up because they were big," she said. "It was harder for me. I'm small."

Colleagues who looked out for Lucero said her age was no secret.

Anita Bautista worked across from Lucero. She and Lucero would sometimes switch places when the teenager fell behind.

"She's just a kid," Bautista said. "A 'chamaca' -- a little girl."

After her shift, Lucero would pick bits of chicken fat from her clothes. Her skin seemed to absorb the smell of the meat. Her throbbing hands would burn for hours.

Weeks after losing her job, she says some fingers still hurt.

She stands up and grabs a bottle of a hot analgesic lotion from a shelf near the kitchen.

"My father," she said, "rubbed this cream on my hands at night."

Current and former workers say Greenville wasn't the only place where House of Raeford hired underage workers. Dozens of minors, they say, also got jobs in West Columbia and Raeford.

Fernando Arevalo, who supervised about 80 workers at the West Columbia plant until he was fired in October, said he knew of five or six underage workers. They looked and acted young, often talking the way teenagers do, he said. Arevalo sometimes asked their ages.

"They'd tell me straight out. 'I'm 15,' " he said.

Lizzie Mae Harris, who worked as a supervisor at the Raeford plant for many years before leaving in 2003, estimated that about two dozen workers in her department were underage.

The boys were still not shaving, she said, and lacked the strength to do jobs designed for grown men, such as pulling skin off turkeys.
"You could look at them," she said, "and tell they were babies."

In Greenville, the principal of the high school that Lucero would have attended said he was not surprised about minors at the plant.

Greer High School Principal Marion Waters said he sometimes sees young people, often immigrants, who look like they should be in school.

"I'm afraid for some teens, the age of innocence didn't last very long," he said. "They're thrown into the marketplace. They're thrown into the workplace. Some are exploited and taken advantage of."

Miguel Pascal said no one asked about his age when he started working at the West Columbia plant. He was 15 when handed a deboning knife and put to work last year on the production line. His father says he often dreams that his oldest son could have stayed in school and later gone on to be a doctor or lawyer. But, he says, when you're a poor family from the mountains of Guatemala, that is rarely an option.

"When you're poor," his father said, "there are choices you have to make that you'd rather not."

He noted it's very common in Guatemala for a 15-year-old to be working.

But many believe children aren't cut out for such work. Marcille Chavis, who worked as a production clerk at House of Raeford's Rose Hill plant for about 20 years before leaving in 2003, said she can recall seeing about 50 plant workers who she suspected were underage. When she pressed one youth who worked on the processing line about his age, he admitted he was 15, she said.

All that troubled her. "A lot of the time, they're not mature enough to know what to do in an emergency," she said.

House of Raeford said supervisors who know of an underage employee should report that to the human resources department because it is a violation of company policy and federal law.

"Any company manager who condones the employment of underage or illegal workers would likewise be in violation of company policy and would be subject to termination of employment," the company said. "And, in fact, we have terminated employees for just such reasons."

Scariest moment

Lucero said the Oct. 7 raid was one of the scariest moments of her young life.

Federal agents came pouring into the Greenville factory just before 9 a.m.

"La migra," workers screamed.

Lucero said she and others tried to escape through an emergency door. It wouldn't budge.

She said she called her sister on her cell phone, weeping, to say goodbye.

She was taken to an empty factory about 10 minutes from the plant. She was fingerprinted and questioned.

Lucero said she pleaded with the agents. She told them about her father and sister in Greenville.

Lucero was released to her sister's custody. She was told she'd be contacted by federal authorities.

She may still be deported.

"I don't want to go," she said. "I want to help my mother. I've only done a little. I want to do more."



EMPLOYMENT REGULATIONSState and federal laws specify the ages at which youths may tackle various kinds of jobs. Some of the key provisions:
NON-AGRICULTURAL WORK
* Youths under 18 may not perform work deemed hazardous by federal rules, including most jobs in meatpacking, logging and roofing. Children under 18 aren't allowed to operate many power tools.
* At 16, youths may work any jobs not designated as hazardous by federal or state laws.
* At 14, children may work in certain retail, food service and gasoline service jobs.
* Children are allowed to baby-sit, deliver newspapers, act or perform at any age.
LIMITS ON WORK HOURS
* Children may not work during school hours.
* 14- and 15-year-olds may not work more than three hours on a school day, or more than 18 hours in a school week. They also may not work more than eight hours on a nonschool day, or more than 40 hours in a nonschool week. In addition, they're not allowed to work before 7 a.m. or after 7 p.m., except in the summer, when they may work until 9 p.m.
AGRICULTURAL WORK
* Youths under 16 may not perform work deemed hazardous by federal rules. Among the prohibited jobs: using power-driven farm machinery or working from scaffolds or ladders more than 20 feet in the air.
* At 14, children may perform any agricultural job not deemed hazardous.
* Children ages 12 and 13 who work on the same farm as their parents may perform nonhazardous agricultural work.
* Children under 12 may work on small farms as long as their parents approve.
* Child labor laws don't apply to children working on farms owned or operated by their families.
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR


STATEMENT FROM HOUSE OF RAEFORD FARMS"We are cooperating fully with State and Federal authorities. Furthermore, we have completed external audits of our records, provided additional training for our human resources staff, and brought in outside experts to review our procedures in order to continually improve the process.
"... It is important to understand that the Company has no reason or incentive to violate the law by hiring underage workers. The Company pays its workers in accordance with negotiated Union rates or uniform plant rates specific to the job they perform. The Company cannot avoid payment of these wages to any individual employee. Furthermore, there is certainly no incentive to hire workers who are not physically able to perform the work required. Each new employee is required to complete an I-9 form to document eligibility to work in the U.S. Federal laws require the Company to accept these documents that appear to be valid, and applicable law requires the Company to be sensitive to nondiscrimination laws."

Franco Ordoñez: 704-358-6180

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