Expendable commodities

I wrote with trepidation about the new permissive child labor laws on May 9th. Unfortunately, my fears are now being realized in spades. We just lost the third kid in five weeks, a sixteen year old.

The latest teen death was Friday night at the Mar-Jac Poultry plant in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, authorities said. It’s the third worker death at the plant since December 2020. Duvan Tomas Perez, who NBC News reported moved to the U.S. from Guatemala six years ago, was cleaning machinery as part of a sanitation crew when he became trapped in equipment on a conveyor belt. He died at the scene, police and the poultry company said.

Michael Schuls, 16, died on June 29 after sustaining injuries at the Florence Hardwoods logging company in Florence, Wisconsin. Michael was attempting to unjam a wood-stacking machine when he became pinned under machinery on a conveyor belt, resulting in what the coroner identified as traumatic asphyxiation, The Associated Press reported.

Will Hampton, 16, died on June 8 in Lee’s Summit, Missouri, after becoming injured while working at the Lee’s Summit Resource Recovery Park landfill. The high school sophomore became pinned between a tractor-trailer rig and its trailer, resulting in his death, police said in a statement.