Paul DeCamp, Member of the Firm in the Employment, Labor & Workforce Management practice, in the firm’s Washington, DC, office, was profiled in Meatingplace Magazine, in “A Solution-Oriented Approach,” by Peter Thomas Ricci.
Following is an excerpt:
Since Nov. 10, 2022 — when the Department of Labor (DOL) asked a federal court to issue a nationwide, temporary restraining order and injunction against PSSI, alleging the prominent sanitation company was illegally employing dozens of minors — the meat industry has endured
a relentless press of investigations and reports of child labor. More than a dozen processors have been subject to DOL investigations, with fines ranging from $30,000 to more than $3.8 million in plants across the nation. In a Hattiesburg, Miss., facility, a 16-year-old boy died after he was pulled into a machine during a deep cleaning shift.
Additionally, a 2023 DOL report revealed that child labor cases were up 69% in the U.S. economy since 2018, with 835 companies employing more than 3,800 minors. Lawmakers have drafted bipartisan legislation to increase the financial penalties for employing minors, and the USDA issued a letter to the 18 largest processors imploring them to confront the “growing problem” of child labor.
As the industry struggles with this child labor surge, the insights of Paul DeCamp are valuable.
A graduate of Harvard College and the Columbia University School of Law, DeCamp is currently a member of the Epstein Becker Green law firm in Washington, D.C., and developed an expertise in employment law over the last three decades — including as an administrator of the DOL’s Wage and Hour Division. Serving from 2005 to the end of 2007, DeCamp joined the agency after nearly a decade in private practice, and the experience was “the most interesting, fascinating job I’ve ever had,” he says.
“It was truly an eye-opening experience,” DeCamp continues. “One of the first things I realized when I got to the government was how much wage and hour law I did not know. I thought I knew it pretty well, but then I found myself surrounded by people who did nothing but wage and hour law 24/7 — and many of them had been doing it for 20, 30, 40 years. I learned a whole lot very quickly, as well as getting more of a 360-degree understanding of the whole wage-and-hour landscape.”
That 360-degree understanding is especially vital in a matter as complex and sensitive as child labor, and DeCamp generously shared his insights with Meatingplace.
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