SIOUX CITY (KTIV) – A second cleaning company has been fined thousands of dollars by the U.S. Department of Labor for employing children to clean Sioux City’s Seaboard Triumph Foods pork processing plant.

Federal investigators found that the sanitation contractor, Qvest LLC, based out of Guymon, OK. employed 11 children for sanitizing at Seaboard Triumph Foods. Qvest was the cleaning contractor for the plant between September of 2019 and September of 2023.

The Labor Department says the first company fined for hiring minors, Fayette Janitorial Services of Tennessee, took over the contract from Qvest, and hired some of the same children Qvest had employed to clean the plant.

Court documents filed in the Northern District of Iowa show that Qvest will pay $171,919 in child labor civil money penalties, hire a third party to review and implement company policies to prevent the employment of children, and set up a process to report possible child labor law violations.