Children employed at Kentucky warehouse operated a forklift, federal officials say
The operator of a distribution center in Hebron, Kentucky, faces a $30,000 fine for employing children — ages 11 and 13 — to operate a forklift and pick up warehouse orders. The findings add to a trend of employers hiring more children illegally, with some of them working in dangerous jobs, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
Investigators discovered the children to be illegally employed in August at a Win.IT America Inc. distribution center in Hebron. The kids had worked there for months and had worked for more hours than legally allowed, the federal agency stated Friday in a news release.
One child was hired as a forklift operator, a hazardous job for workers under 18, and the second was tasked with picking up orders in the warehouse, which is prohibited for those under 16, according to the DOL.
The warehouse is one of multiple locations run by California-based Win.IT America, the U.S. branch of Shanghai, China-based Win.IT Information Technology Co., a provider of integrated supply chain solutions with more than 700 workers in Austria, Germany, Great Britain and the U.S.
The company is not alone in paying children to perform jobs that put them at risk, which is against U.S. labor laws. Federal regulators in July reported finding nearly 4,500 children working in violation of federal child labor laws over the prior 10 months, an increase of 44% from a year earlier, the DOL said.
The agency's "Wage and Hour Division is committed to combating the alarming increase in child labor violations in the U.S.," stated its Atlanta-based regional administrator, Juan Coria. "Employers are responsible for taking all appropriate actions to verify that they are not illegally employing children."
Separately, the DOL last summer cited Win.IT America for systemic overtime violations, saying the warehouse operator and e-commerce distributor owed more than $1 million in back wages to nearly 1,000 workers in California and Kentucky, including the Hebron facility.
Win.It America could could not be reached for comment.
