From poor student to award-winning federal employee

Grand Ledge resident Justin Uphold grew up in tiny Waldron, Indiana, where his 1.7 grade-point-average put him near the bottom of his 28-student senior class in 2009.

“I went through school not really caring that much. I was sort of the runt and didn’t play sports, so I was always just trying to be funny and fit in,” he explained. “After graduating, I didn’t have any options. So, I decided I wanted to try the hardest thing I could possibly do.”

That was enlisting in the U.S. Marine Corps. The experience helped Uphold build confidence.

“I made it through boot camp by the skin of my teeth,” Uphold said. “But I ended up proving to myself that I was tougher and smarter than I thought.”

It also helped him realize he was college material. Uphold, 33, earned a bachelor’s in criminal justice from Baker College in Owosso and a master’s online in public administration from Arizona State university. That led him to a job in the U.S. Labor Department office in Lansing.

Last month, he and two co-workers, Nancy Alcantara and Shannon Rebolledo, were named co-recipients of the 2024 Federal Employee of the Year Award at the Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medals ceremony after their office spearheaded a federal investigation of labor violations in the meatpacking industry.

They are in good company. In 2020, the recipient was Dr. Anthony J. Fauci, who led the nation through the COVID crisis.

The Labor Department investigation began in 2022, less than a year after Uphold was promoted from his role as a Lansing-based investigator to a remote position at Labor’s Wage and Hour Division Regional Office in Chicago.

The trio’s work revealed that Wisconsin-based Packers Sanitation Services Inc. had hired at least 102 underage empoyees, ages 13 to 17 years, to work overnight shifts cleaning slaughterhouse and meat-packing equipment at 13 plants in eight states.

In the fallout, the company paid more than $1.5 million in fines, the federal maximum of $15,138 per underage worker. The settlement marked both the highest total fine and the most workers ever cited by Uphold’s office in a single investigation, he said.

“We know that there could have been way more,” Uphold said. “It’s a very serious and prevalent issue, and the industry has been trying to correct it ever since.”

His grades suffered as a child, in part, due to his proclivity for computers and video games. But Uphold said his technological knowledge later helped him excel in his job.

“Growing up on a computer every day ended up giving me a bunch of skills that were really valuable. I ended up getting into the analytical side of things and got good at research and finding things in the numbers,” he said.

He was tasked with combing through mass amounts of data to identify potential labor violations in a variety of industries, including grocery stores and gas stations.

“I found that there was a need for us to look closer at meat packing, and we ended up creating a strategic initiative focusing on that industry,” he said.

Not long after that, Uphold said, a superior told him that a Grand Island, Nebraska, schoolteacher had filed a complaint that some students were clearly exhausted and sleep deprived.

“They believed it was because they were maybe working overnight in a meatpacking plant,” Uphold explained.

That one tip marked a turning point for the case, he said, because workers themselves “aren’t going to be the ones who call us.”

“A lot of the industries are so insular, and they’re scared to report anything themselves because this is their livelihood,” Uphold said.

The youths were being used to sanatize equipment, which is dangerous.

“One of the worst things that can happen in the meatpacking industry is decapitation, or somebody could lose a hand. Most often, this is the people that are cleaning machines,” he said. “Operators are familiar with interacting with these machines all day. But when you’re 15, and you’re going in at night to clean them and have never seen them work, you could get injured pretty badly.”

Raymond Holt for City Pulse Uphold in his home office.

In mid-2022, Uphold’s office had learned enough to justify requesting search warrants for the PSSI headquarters in Kieler, Wisconsin, the JBS USA plants in Grand Island and Worthington, Minnesota, and another in Sedalia, Missouri.

“I hadn’t been at the agency that long, but I’d never heard of us doing a search warrant,” he said. “The difference between that and a subpoena is pretty significant because, with a warrant, you have to let us in.”

In late August 2022, Uphold was stationed with his computer in a Wisconsin hotel room, from which he provided support to 14 of his co-workers as they executed the warrants simultaneously in all four states starting at 1 a.m.

The worst culprit was the JBS plant in Nebraska, which Uphold’s office cited for having 27 underage workers. One youth suffered burns from caustic chemicals used to clean dangerous slaughterhouse power equipment like industrial saws and skull-splitters, the agency said.

The investigation uncovered more violations at plants in Arkansas, Colorado, Indiana, Kansas, Minnesota, Tennessee and Texas. Nebraska led the tally with 33 underage workers at three plants. Minnesota had 25, including 22 at another JBS-owned plant, while 26 more were employed at the Cargill plant in Dodge City, Kansas.

As a result of these findings, JBS, Cargill and Tyson opted to cut ties with PSSI, whose earnings plummeted.

Uphold said his work is just beginning.

“There’s so much momentum right now, and we know that child labor is not going anywhere unless we do something about it.” he said. “We’re willing to do it.”

Uphold is thankful to have earned the recognition for his contributions to the case. At the same time, he said, he views his work as just one piece of a much greater whole. 

“Anybody in our agency would have put their hands up for this mission. It’s not even a question, because this is our dream job,” he said. “There were definitely people that were way better investigators than me. I just had a particular set of skills that I was able to bring to the table.”

Having welcomed a son, Bennett, to his family six months ago, Uphold has yet another reason to locate and save even more children from dangerous working conditions.

“Our work matters because the people and kids we’re helping matter,” he said. “If they ever felt like they didn’t matter, it’s just because they were doing all this work in darkness and felt invisible to the world. Our job is to continue to shine a light on it.”