- Tomas Duvan Perez, 16, died after becoming trapped in equipment while working at a Mississippi poultry plant.
- It is illegal for US poultry plants to hire minors. The company says a hiring agency misled them about his age.
Duvan Tomas Perez was just 10 years old when he moved from Guatemala to the United States with his family. Now, six years later, he is dead because of a workplace accident at a poultry plant that should've never hired him.
Perez, 16, died on July 14 at the Mar-Jac poultry plant in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, NBC News reported. He died from his injuries after becoming trapped in equipment on a conveyor belt. It is illegal under federal law for minors to work in poultry plants due to the inherent workplace safety hazards.
A spokesperson for the Mar-Jac Poultry plant in Hattiesburg, Mississippi claims an outside hiring agency misled the company by misrepresenting the boy's age, the Huffington Post reported.
Hiring agencies are often unreliable when it comes to ensuring workers are not minors and have the proper qualifications for hazardous workplaces, Jordan Barab, former deputy assistant secretary of labor at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, told the Huffington Post.
"These temp agencies don't have any scruples at all," Barab said. "They don't have any national reputation to uphold. They're just trying to sell workers, basically."
While OSHA is going after these agencies, Barab noted they continue to thrive because employers are trying to avoid paying more qualified workers.
The poultry plant where Perez worked does not exactly have a clean safety record. In 2021, an employee was caught in a poultry processing machine and died as a result of his injuries. In 2020, another employee died after a coworker "placed the air nozzle on the lower back of the employee's pants and injected air into employee's rectum," according to the OSHA report.
Joe Colee, the plant's manager, told NBC News the company is cooperating with the current OSHA investigation into Perez's death.
His death marks the third child workplace death in the last month, the Huffington Post reported.
On June 29, 16-year-old Michael Schuls died from asphyxiation after becoming trapped under equipment on a conveyor belt while working for a Wisconsin logging company. And on June 5, 16-year-old Will Hampton died in Missouri after becoming trapped between a tractor-trailer and its rig while working at a landfill.
Meanwhile, legislators in at least 10 states across the country have proposed loosening child labor laws. These proposals have included measures like easing restrictions on school night hours and allowing kids as young as 14 to serve alcohol, PBS News Hour reports. Wisconsin, Ohio, and Iowa are all considering policies that would relax child labor laws to address worker shortages, according to the outlet.