Young people with a migrant background are suing Raw Seafoods for child labor violations

Three migrant teens filed a lawsuit in federal court last week alleging that their employer, a seafood processing plant in Fall River, violated several labor laws, including prohibitions on forced labor, discrimination and “hazardous child labor,” by forcing them to work long hours Working night shifts with dangerous machinery.

The processing plant, Raw Seafoods Inc., is described as a leading seafood supplier in New England and employs approximately 350 people. The allegations provide a glimpse into a troubling trend: the rise of migrant children in the United States working in dangerous industries like seafood processing, often living on the margins and under enormous work pressure. According to the lawsuit, all of the teens began working at the processing plant in 2022 when they were 15 years old. Each had recently immigrated from Guatemala to support their families. Two live in the United States without their parents.

“Raw Seafoods has profited from the exploitation of immigrant children,” attorneys representing the immigrant teens wrote in the complaint. They are represented by Justice At Work, an employment law firm that provides legal services to low-wage workers, and Yale Law School’s Worker and Immigrant Rights Advocacy Clinic. The migrant workers are not named in the lawsuit because they are minors and for fear of reprisals for reporting the allegations, lawyers said.

In the complaint, lawyers provided grim details about the stressful working conditions. The teenage migrants worked as fishing trawlers, they wrote, “using machinery with sharp blades, operating a dangerous fish-grading machine, transporting heavy boxes … spending much of their shift in subzero temperatures and being exposed to toxic chemicals and fumes,” they wrote. They often worked ten and a half hour shifts, starting shortly after school (3:30 p.m.) until 2 a.m. or later, up to six days a week.

The teenage migrants suffered injuries from the work, including cuts on their hands from operating the fish cutting machine, freezer burn from handling frozen fish without protective equipment, back injuries from lifting heavy boxes, and rashes from toxic chemicals used to clean the machines. the complaint says. In addition, they were exposed to persistent low temperatures while working in a refrigeration facility and “routinely suffered from flu-like symptoms” so severe that one would often put a napkin under one’s face mask to “catch the heavy sinus discharge while working.” “.

“The [company’s] “The company’s conduct was, at least in part, designed to maximize the productivity of its employees through forced labor and to increase the company’s production and revenue,” the lawyers wrote.

In a written statement, Scott Hutchens, co-owner and vice president of Raw Seafoods, denied the lawsuit’s allegations. “As a family business, we have valued the health, safety and fair treatment of our employees for 26 years,” he wrote. “These allegations are both shocking and hurtful and are a direct attack on our core value of treating all of our employees with respect and dignity.”

Hutchens added that the company was unable to investigate the employment conditions of the underage workers because they remained anonymous in the lawsuit. According to the complaint, the migrant teens stopped working at the processing plant in 2023.

“Raw Seafoods is fully compliant with state and federal labor regulations and undergoes regular internal reviews and external audits to ensure the company’s practices are lawful and safe,” Hutchens continued in his statement.

In Massachusetts, strict child labor laws limit the hours worked by workers under 18. They are prohibited from working more than 18 hours per week during school hours. People under 15 are not allowed to work night shifts that end after 7:00 p.m. Additional restrictions prohibit people under 16 from working in food processing plants, warehouses, freezers or with dangerous machinery.

According to the complaint, the migrant teens often slept only two to three hours a night while trying to go to both school and work. Many of the allegations centered on a supervisor, named only as Rolando, who “fomented a hostile work environment… by insulting her with racist remarks, obscenities and obscenities on an almost daily basis.” It added that the supervisor had “berated” her, for taking days off to attend school and, in one case, discouraging a teenager from attending school during the 2022-2023 school year by “denying him time off to receive vaccinations required for school enrollment.”

The lawsuit was filed at a time when child labor violations were increasingly in focus across the country. According to the Labor Department, more than 300,000 migrant children have entered the United States on their own since 2021. As a result, the number of children employed in violation of federal law rose more than five-fold last year from a low point in 2015.

Last year, the Department of Labor launched a comprehensive investigation into child labor at several seafood processing plants in New Bedford. City and school officials have teamed up with the Department of Labor to stop the trend. But they say it’s a challenging task. Many jobs in industries such as seafood processing are filled by undocumented immigrants, many of whom are at risk of exploitation. Some work illegally with fake documents.

Migrant children, many of whom live in the United States without their parents, such as the teenagers who work at Raw Seafoods, often face financial pressure to work. Several people interviewed by The Light late last year said they were saddled with debt from financing immigration and paying rent in the United States while sending money to support their families back home. Sometimes they intentionally slip through the cracks of the school system, social services and law enforcement agencies whose job it is to protect them from exploitation.

“Raw Seafoods is one of countless other companies that exploit the vulnerable immigrant child community with impunity,” wrote Marí Perales Sánchez, one of the students at Yale Law School’s Worker and Immigrant Rights Advocacy Clinic, in a statement accompanying the lawsuit. “This country cannot allow powerful companies to use and abuse children as a business model.”

Email reporter Will Sennott at [email protected]