Child-Labor Scandal Hits Blackstone-Backed Slaughterhouse Cleaner
- Price of company’s loan slides amid furor over child labor
- Two major clients cut ties to Blackstone’s Packers Sanitation
Blackstone headquarters in New York.
Photographer: Michael Nagle/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
A child-labor scandal has plunged a company owned by private equity titan Blackstone Inc. into a rapidly escalating crisis — and set off alarms.
It began on Feb. 17, when the US Labor Department accused the company, Packers Sanitation Services Inc., of employing children as young as 13 in overnight cleaning shifts at meatpacking plants nationwide, exposing them to hazardous chemicals and dangerous equipment like back saws and head splitters. It fined the company $1.5 million.