Competition and low profit margins generate a corporate motive for maximum productivity, and deregulation has shredded health and safety standards.

A study by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS; now the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services) in 1997 found that one-fourth of the workers in seven meatpacking plants in Iowa and Nebraska had “questionable” documents. The INS's Operation Vanguard in 1999 rounded up immigrants in slaughterhouses, bringing charges that employers and the government colluded to prevent workers from organizing unions.

1998, Douglas Kruse and Douglas Mahony estimated that during an average week about 148,000 minors were working in violation of the law. They also found that youths in banned occupations were paid $1.38 less per hour than adults in the same job, saving employers about $155 million per year