A hamburger-selling clown finds himself in hot water after a sweeping search found over 300 children, some as young as 10, working at locations across several states.
McDonald’s locations in Kentucky, Indiana, Maryland and Ohio, operated under three franchisees — Bauer Food LLC, Archways Richwood LLC and Bell Restaurant Group I LLC, have been accused of violating child labor laws in all four states. 45 of the 62 stores were in Kentucky, and the two 10-year-olds were in Louisville, Ky.
The violations were spread over three separate franchisees, as none were corporate stores. The violations range from children operating machinery they weren’t legally allowed to, to numerous violations involving inappropriate working hours. Check this out.
The two 10-year-olds were among at least 305 children found to have been employed in violation of federal labor laws across 62 McDonald’s locations in Kentucky, Indiana, Maryland and Ohio, operated under three franchisees — Bauer Food LLC, Archways Richwood LLC and Bell Restaurant Group I LLC, the Labor Department said.
The two children prepared and distributed food orders, cleaned the store, worked at the drive-thru window and operated a register, investigators found. One of the kids was also allowed to operate a deep fryer, a task prohibited for workers under the age of 16 under federal law.
McDonalds in Kentucky violated #ChildLabor laws for over 300 kids, including one franchise that had two 10-year-olds working the drive-thru until 2:-00 a.m. and one who used a deep fryer — we are not making this up! via WaPost:https://t.co/IvlGMduVJx
— Child Labor Coalition (@ChildLaborCLC) May 4, 2023
There simply is no excuse for having children working on dangerous equipment. Burns and accidents can happen to adults running fryers and grills, so there is never a reason to entrust one to a small child.
Despite the fact that it is Kentucky, it still isn’t a third-world country (I live there), so it is a bad look for the company and the franchisees involved.
Bauer Food LLC said the two 10-year-olds alleged to have been employed at the McDonald’s restaurant were children of a night manager who were visiting their parent at work and were not approved by franchisee organization management to be in that part of the restaurant.
Archways Richwood LLC, which is based in Florence, Kentucky, owns most of the stores across Northern Kentucky and appears to be the most egregious offenders, though to their credit, it didn’t have 10-year-olds running fry machines.
Archways Richwood LLC, based in Walton, was found to have allowed 242 children between the ages of 14 and 15 to work beyond allowable hours. Most worked earlier or later in the day than the law permits and more than three hours on school days, the Labor Department said. The employer was expected to be fined an estimated $143,566 in civil money penalties for the violations.
There will be hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines levied on all of the franchisees and numerous jobs lost among the management and administration. Labor violations like this aren’t a reflection on the corporation; rather, it is a failure by the individual franchisee to oversee their management teams and properly train them on the labor laws and the importance of having zero violations.
Hopefully, the responsible people will be fired, and the ownership groups can learn from this and employ more responsible, more conscientious managers.
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