The National Chicken Council has described a U.S. Department of Labor survey of labor law compliance in the chicken processing industry as “inaccurate and misleading.”
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“This report from the Department of Labor’s wage and hour division gives an inaccurate and misleading picture of compensation practices in the poultry industry,” said David R. Wylie, an industry attorney. “The report reflects the fact that the wage and hour division believes that workers should be paid for such simple acts as putting on smocks and hairnets, whereas in most plants workers go ‘on the clock’ when they actually start work. This has been the custom and practice in the industry for many years, and there is no definitive law or court ruling to the contrary.”
“This difference of interpretation accounts for the vast preponderance of the problems that DOL professes to see in the processing plants,” Wylie said. “Other matters are paperwork errors or minor oversights that were corrected as soon as they were brought to the company’s attention.”
Wylie said that the two alleged incidents of child labor problems in processing plants revolved around persons who misstated their age when being hired and subsequently handled tasks that are reserved to persons 18 years of age or older. These problems have also been corrected, he said.
The National Chicken Council is the Washington-based trade association representing integrated chicken producer-processors, the companies that produce, process and market chickens. Member companies of NCC account for more than 90 percent of the chicken sold in the United States.
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