A dozen Democratic senators have written a letter pushing the federal Department of Labor to do more to curb illegal child labor.

The call from Tim Kaine, Mark Warner and others follows troubling reports from here in Virginia.

The Department of Labor has already been investigating two of the nation’s biggest poultry producers – Perdue Farms and Tyson Foods – over reports that the companies have used illegal child labor in their plants.

The New York Times Magazine reported in September about a 14-year-old boy who almost lost an arm while working in a Perdue slaughterhouse on the Eastern Shore.

The Biden administration had already promised to crack down on illegal child labor.

The letter from the senators referenced a case where a cleaning company found to be using child labor was punished by the Labor Department. However, the larger companies that contracted the cleaners and therefore benefited from the child labor – including Tyson – have not.

The group writes that those larger companies should be punished “to the fullest extent possible under the law.”

NPR reports that child labor violations have quadrupled over the last eight years, according to federal data. 

That’s led to more injuries and deaths where these kids are working, like the case from July when a 16-year-old died after getting entangled in a machine he was cleaning at a Mississippi poultry plant.

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