Next month, when our December magazine issue hits mailboxes, you’ll get to a know a little bit about Sarah Fister Gale, a contributing editor for Meatingplace who, to our shock, passed away in early November.

The editorial is a lamentation on the nature of working with a contract worker, in that it’s mostly a transactional relationship based on the trade of services and money, rather than emotion. It’s that type of relationship, though, that also shields us from the emotional damage that loved ones must feel when their loved one dies.

And though it’s a call for more meaningful relationships internally and externally as a means of insurance when things go wrong, it takes on another application in light of the federal government’s probe into one of the meat industry’s largest contractors, Packers Sanitation Services Inc. (PSSI), and its alleged use of child labor.

Contracting out the night shift is a convenience for the packing industry; for the exchange of payment, it gets a vital service without a direct connection to those doing the potentially dangerous work — and PSSI takes responsibility for management and training, health insurance costs and worker’s compensation.

"Outsourcing sanitation to a provider with skilled, well-trained sanitors and 24/7 management oversight can not only minimize accidents, but also take the liability and risk off your facility’s record," PSSI says on its website.

Another convenience is, when a PSSI worker gets hurt or, worse, dies on the job, the packer needn’t feel what the PSSI workers, colleagues or families feel.

It’s a dangerous disconnect, though. When tragedies occur and make the news, consumers can’t help but make the connection themselves. With the Department of Labor’s latest probe, which brings injured children into the picture, the connection comes into an even more damaging focus.

This isn’t someone else’s problem. Sure, PSSI, the only defendant named in the DOL’s lawsuit, has its hands full on the litigation front. But the optics are terrible for the packing industry, too.

The question, of course, is: How can it help solve the problem? (Please offer ideas in the comments below.)

And, no, pointing the finger at a political administration tightening the regulatory screws on the industry doesn’t help. These PSSI optics problems have persisted through vastly different political regimes, for many years. So have those with the E-Verify program. And so have labor shortages.

Packers have little to no control over those factors. I would think, though, that they have — or perhaps should have — more control in their relationship with contractors such as PSSI. If the cleaning and sanitation work that the “graveyard shift” performs pretty much determines whether or not the first and second shifts run each day, it is important enough that packers have a more intimate knowledge of the contractor’s management, recruitment, hiring and training of contracted workers.

As Tyson Foods told Meatingplace, for example: “We are actively engaging our suppliers to conduct a detailed review of their processes to ensure our rigorous standards are being met.”

Or, is the answer to not outsource such important work at all? Would developing and managing those workforces internally lead to more meaningful relationships with the people doing that work? Would that elevate those persons’ value, and the quality of their work, for the company? Would a feeling of ownership lead to greater care in the stewardship of human resources? One packer, for example, told us long ago that his “third shift” was made up only of his employees, and that he called them “first shift” to recognize their importance and give them due respect.

Let alone all that, though. What about common sense? Biometrics aside, what about the human eye test? Not too many 13-year-olds look to the naked eye near old enough to work in a meatpacking plant, no matter what their fake ID or E-verify says. If it’s too difficult to parse them out when they’re donning helmets, goggles, hairnets, and masks, do the parsing before they put it on (when clocking in).

Investigators sure used their eyes. As stated in the DOL’s lawsuit, “WHD witnessed multiple workers entering the JBS facility in Grand Island, Nebraska, during the PSSI overnight cleaning shift who appeared to be minors based on their stature and appearance.” (I added the bold font and italics.)

No doubt, as PSSI has pointed out, there could be “rogue individuals” perpetrating fraud here (and those, based on DOL’s lawsuit, could include several PSSI managers and supervisors alleged to have tried thwarting the agency’s investigations). Bad apples emerge in any company and any industry, and no system — be it the government’s or the company’s — is foolproof.

How can packers help improve it, though?

It’s not someone else’s problem

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