The long reach of Cheetos. NY Times exposes migrant child labor abuses at factories making Cheetos. Company received $5.5 million of incentives from Lamont administration to make more in Connecticut.

New York Times reporter Hannah Dreier revealed abuses of migrant child laborers in the food manufacturing business. The astonishing February 25th story highlighted the appalling conditions endured by migrant children illegally employed making Cheetos, a popular product of Frito-Lay.

The investigation found that food processing company Hearthside Food Solutions–a supplier of Cheetos to Frito-Lay–violates state and federal labor laws by hiring children and requiring them to work in dangerous conditions. In one instance, Dreier reported, “Underage workers in Grand Rapids said that spicy dust from immense batches of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos made their lungs sting, and that moving heavy pallets of cereal all night made their backs ache.” Injuries abound but no one in authority appears to care enough to act. “Unaccompanied minors have had their legs torn off in factories and their spines shattered on construction sites, but most of these injuries go uncounted. The Labor Department tracks the deaths of foreign-born child workers but no longer makes them public,” Dreier and four Times researchers discovered.

PepsiCo, which owns Frito-Lay, declined to comment on the Times story.

Dreier won a Pulitzer Prize for feature writing for her ProPublica series on the travails suffered by Long Island immigrants. She was a 2022 Pulitzer Prize finalist for investigative reporting.

Cheetos have played an outsized role in Governor Ned Lamont’s administration. Frito-Lay makes Cheetos in a Killingly plant. Lamont has been enthusiastic about the expansion of the Cheetos plant since the start of his first administration in 2019. The Greenwich Democrat immediately abandoned his proposal to enact the nation’s first statewide sugary drinks tax the day after he unveiled it when he learned it jeopardized the making of more Cheetos in Connecticut.

PepsiCo owns Frito-Lay and is also one of the world’s premier makers of sugary drinks. Emails obtained after prolonged proceedings before the Freedom of Information Commission revealed the sugary drinks tax did not go down well with Indra Nooyi, a friend of Lamont and his wife, Ann Huntress Lamont. Nooyi enjoyed a long, lucrative and well-chronicled career at PepsiCo. Nooyi served as CEO of PepsiCo for 12 years, stepping down from that position in 2018 but serving as chairman of the conglomerate until early 2019.

Lamont announced at the start of his first term that Nooyi would serve as an economic adviser to his administration. A month later, Lamont unveiled the sugary drinks tax. Mrs. Lamont learned in an email later that day that Nooyi was not pleased, not pleased at all. Yale School of Management Dean Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, acting as an intermediary between moguls for Nooyi, let the Lamonts know that Nooyi was “embarrassed and surprised by the soda tax–avoiding PepsiCo colleagues and media.” Avoiding the media was not something Nooyi had a lot of experience in doing.

The news from Sonnenfeld to the Lamonts grew worse. “The soda tax is likely to cost us the big Frito Lay deal–plus others-I am told first hand.” Mrs. Lamont concluded in a message to the new governor’s top staffers that the soda tax “will cost us the plant and any other goodwill with Pepsi.” Early that day, Lamont explained the virtues of the tax as “intended to encourage healthier food choices by our state’s residents, mitigate future health costs and, if enacted, would place Connecticut last the first state to do so.” Those health benefits and millions in tax revenue could not withstand a scowl from Nooyi directed at Lamont. The threat of abandoning plans to expand the Killingly Cheetos plant killed the tax in less than a day. It was never mentioned again. The Office of the Attorney General, in consultation with Mrs. Lamont, expended many hours resisting the release of the documents that told the sordid tale of influence among Connecticut’s wealthiest residents.

Dreams do come true. In 2021, Lamont concluded a deal to provide $5.5 million in incentives to Frito-Lay in exchange for the company expanding its Killingly plant. Administration spokesman Adam Joseph told Daily Ructions this week that it has not asked Frito-Lay for an explanation of its use of a major supplier that uses and endangers child migrant labor. It’s all about the Cheetos variety of crony capitalism.

The governor has, however, proposed H.B. 6661, a bill to protect workers’ in state financed projects. That legislation should not preclude the governor from contacting Frito-Lay and demanding an explanation and insisting that it cease doing business with companies that exploit migrant children. Maybe he could get Nooyi to join him in a strongly worded letter.

Published March 3, 2023.