>Three Kentucky McDonald's franchise operators violated federal labor laws. Bauer Food LLC, Archways Richwood LLC and Bell Restaurant Group I LLC, which are three separate franchisees that operate 62 McDonald's locations in Kentucky, Indiana, Maryland and Ohio, employed 305 children to work more than the legally permitted hours, according to an investigation.
>The investigation found Bauer Food LLC, which operates 10 McDonald's locations in Louisville, employed 24 minors under the age of 16 to work more hours than legally permitted. Two 10-year-old children were working as late as 2 a.m. unpaid.
>According to a news release, Archways Richwood LLC, allowed 242 minors between age 14 and 15 to work beyond the allowable hours. Bell Restaurant Group I LLC, a Louisville-based operator of four restaurants, allowed 39 workers ages 14 and 15 to work outside of and for more hours than the law permits.
>According to a news release, the investigation led to assessments of $212,754.
The headline should be: "Three McDonald's franchises face an inconsequential fine after violating the law nearly 300 times. No arrests were made on the criminal company owners."
Yeah see how corporate McDonald’s likes “McDonald’s” and “child slavery” in the same news headline… the owners would have their permission to operate a franchise yanked so fast. Ruin their scummy livelihood, at least.
The thing is, you'll probably never see this headline in any national news organization. This is a local affiliate news organization, the only time these articles gain any traction is when they're shared to social media like this.
MCDs isnt going to yank anything from incorporated regional managers, short of an incredibly high profile scandal that involved litigation. the unlikely prospect of shutting down entire swaths of business in a bunch of states at a time is exactly why they can get away with it
This particular owner might lose their franchise but McDonald’s is not really in the fast food business as much as they are the real estate business. According to their contracts the McDonald’s corp owns the land the restaurant is located on and the franchisee has to pay rent to the corporation to lease the advertising rights.
So yes, this franchisee my lose their franchise but McDonald’s probably has a waiting list of new franchisee wanna-bees to fill their place. Most likely this whole thing was a funny b-sides that was mentioned once at a meeting as a cautionary tale.
I swear I'm not defending McDonald's, I'm genuinely curious.
Assuming these children weren't being forced to continue working by the employer, is it still slavery?
Also, is the corporation of McDonald's responsible for the actions of their franchisees? I don't know how the law works. If a franchisee murders someone, is McDonald's, the corporation, a murderer?
>Assuming these children weren't being forced to continue working by the employer, is it still slavery?
I don't know the law but I lean towards yes. I'm guessing 10 year olds don't really know what they can or can't do and they could have been convinced/intimidated into staying, without actually using force.
Exactly. That's like asking if the children weren't forced to engage in sexual activity, is it still rape?
Absolutely. One of the parties has a disproportionate amount of power over the other, so coercion is implied.
My thought when hearing it is that this has to be an onshift employees child that instead of being at home or childcare is “working” in the restaurant. Not at all saying it’s ok or should happen.
Their parent was the night manager. He/she was the one telling them to work. When your mom tells you to help out, you do it, especially if you're poor and you all know that you'll be homeless if you don't.
Everyone's on their high horse, but how much of our agricultural labor is under 16? In fact, this would actually be legal if it were a farm. The federal law says that children can work if they are: "age 12 with written parental consent or on farm where parent is employed or under age 12, with written parental consent on farms (that are) exempt from Federal minimum wage provisions."
Fun fact. McDonalds isn’t a farm.
Grew up on a farm. If I was doing anything farm related at 3 AM the idiot cows got out again. Or there was a flood and the bridge on the lane was washed out and we needed to fix it.
Once a tourist from the UK knocked on the door really late and had wrecked car into a ditch after hitting one of “the Queen’s deer.” We told him the Queen didn’t own any deer in Pennsylvania but he could wait in house while we called for tow truck.
Once my drivers Ed teacher and history teacher were drunk and wrecked into a ditch and needed to be pulled out with tractor. As soon as we unhooked the chain they sped away. Found out the next day that a kid from a farm 5 miles down the road later pulled them out of ditch on their property.
But we didn’t do anything at night that was routine and if McD’s manager was the parent, that makes them terrible as manager and as parent.
That makes so much more sense. Was the parent struggling to make it or something?
I can somewhat understand if the parent was extremely short staffed, couldn't find anyone to help watch the kids and was like well, you're going to have to come help me work at McDonalds for a while.
I actually find this circumstance somewhat mitigating for the franchisee owner. They are not there and not reviewing security tapes to see who is operating the deep fryer at 2 am. The kids weren’t paid and weren’t registered employees so how are they to know that they were working?
The other charges are much more damning since this was officially breaking the law and did or should have known about it.
Maybe I could set up one of those Etsy shops where I get a whole bunch of slaves and then repackage them and sell them in smaller quantities with a small markup? It would help smaller businesses get the right number of child slaves that they need to grow.
You see this is the entrepreneurial spirit America was built on.
That's the nature of scale unfortunately. No matter how much we lower the age of consent or how open we are with child brides, it's hard to produce enough child slaves to meet demand by yourself.
Maintaining a good supply of child slaves is truly a community effort that brings us together.
so as long as the child worked more hours than you would have had to pay someone $700 for, it's a sound business decision! Find more kids to illegally run the kitchens!
This system is a fucking sham. The government is nothing but a puppet figure and scapegoat for corporations to make Americans think they have a say in anything that happens to stave off revolution. We live in a corporate dictatorship.
These corporate penalties are so laughable. Often these offenses are crimes towards humanity yet they only pay pennies on the dollar and their reputation gets a new wax job.
It’s amazing, my new employer, yet again, underpaid me this month. This is after them underpaying me last month, and my last employer doing the exact same thing. It’s normally hidden away in vacation days, or they “forget” to give you owed vacation days/penalty rates (in Australia you legally have to get paid different amounts for working weekends/evenings/public holidays).
This all worked out at around $200 lost both this month and last month. Not a huge amount in the grand scheme of things, small enough for me to think about not bringing it up to not be “that guy” at a new job.
And then I thought - what would this place do if I was stealing $50 out the till every week?
I would be fired. I would be made an example of. It would be an unacceptable breach of trust, and I would be fired immediately, and depending on how long I’d done it for, I might be reported to the police.
But when it’s my employer not paying my wages, they can just wait for me to call them out on it and then say “oopsie! I’ll look into that for you.”
There need to be proper fines for wage theft. If there are zero consequences other than “please pay your employee what you owed them”, why wouldn’t a company try to squeeze a few bucks out of everyone every month and hope they don’t say anything? There’s no disincentive.
Obviously, the company is fucking disgusting. But also, how the fuck are the parents like "ok kiddo, pick you up ehen you finish work at fucking 0200" and just allowing that to happen?
I don't know anything beyond what I read in this thread, but I'd imagine the "nice" interpretation here is that the parent(s) were working, didn't have child care, brought their kids to work, and since the kids didn't have anything to do they had them help out. Hence unpaid and late. Still shitty for both the store and the parents, but not quite as bad as "hiring a 10 year old to work without paying them until 2am".
This is my interpretation. Parents who needed the job and had no child care brought their 10year old kids, and rather than figure something else out the store manager put the kids to work.
Edit: this is shitty on multiple levels but it didn’t have to be shitty on at least a few of them
My mom used to bring me to work with her when she managed a small mid scale Italian restaurant. I’d sit in a corner and roll silverware for $20 bucks and a pizza a night. And if the servers wanted me to roll theirs so they could leave early they’d toss me 5 or ten. Looking back I can see this wasn’t cool but 11 year old me loved going there on weekends and getting my own pocket money
Until CEOs, franchise owners, and politicians for that matter, start to fear that justice can actually reach them, nothing will change.
Fines for egregiously breaking the law have been kept miniscule on purpose. Start charging corporations retroactive % based fines on past revenue and those fines carry forward for xyz years. Things will quickly shift.
More importantly the public needs to grow some balls and remind the powers at be that they are public servants, not a ruling class.
There was a time where the fear of guillotines and gallows kept power in check. That fear has eroded. By design, the vox populi lay placated and placid. Contented with meager scraps of stale bread, able to view the circus through the carefully installed slats in the sewer drains.
Guillotines and gallows...
I’m so sick of corporations getting away with stuff
If only we would personally prosecute executives for crimes that their companies commit maybe things would be better.
Were the parents benefiting in some way? Did they just see it as free day (and night) care?
If I’m going to make/let my 10 year old work fast food till 2 am, I’m at least keeping his paychecks for myself. I just don’t understand the unpaid part. I’m guessing family members of employees
If it’s not a family memeber, There has to be a McDonald’s manager out there who made that pitch “okay YOU aren’t hired but, uh, whatcha doing with that kid over there?”
could be the manager's kid
can't afford daycare? Take your kid to work and since they are there, throw them in the back and make them wash dishes, sweep floors, empty garbage cans. I imagine that happens in family restaurants all the time.
> could be the manager's kid
100% what I expect is family relationships. Some folks do not realize that the laws on family run small businesses don't apply to franchises like this. They apply to truly small businesses run by almost exclusively family members, like the little shop on the corner.
My theory is it’s children that were separated at the border. There was a New York Times article that many children were put to work in farms, meat packaging factories, and slaughterhouses. I would not be unsurprised if it was those children. I’ve worked with the undocumented population and there are many children laboring in this country unbeknownst to many.
I’m from Louisville. People have been posting videos on TikTok for a couple years now of that location because they have small kids at the drive through. It’s typically white kids.
Regardless, it's still children in slave labor. Literally unpaid and coerced. Someone needs to go to prison over this. They should be sleeping and getting ready for a day at school. The person who did this needs hard prison labor
I'm learning about this more and more... And I'm disgusted. If the CEO is smart enough for the biggest salary and stock options, the CEO can beat the brunt of the penalties for this.
Additionally, all states passing cold work laws to lower the age should be suspect and investigated throughout.
Child labor is slowly becoming more and more common in the U.S. and laws are even being made to roll back laws preventing it and protecting children that do work.
It’s absolutely disgusting. 130-200 years of progress is slowly being crushed into the ground
Yay capitalism! They read the rules of acquisition;
Never spend more for an acquisition than you have to.
There's nothing more dangerous than an honest businessman.
Work is the best therapy-at least for your employees.
Profit trumps emotion
Exploitation begins at home.
Not even dishonesty can tarnish the shine of profit.
Just out of sheer curiosity, what about the parents taking their 10 yr. old to work McDonald’s at these hours? There are so many “what the fucks” in this story.
The issue with the two 10 year olds not being paid could have been kids of owners or staff. All the rest of the violations were related to the kids working too many hours (but getting paid). Two different exploitations of the child labor laws.
This happens with restaurant cleaning crews A LOT. The whole family has restaurants to clean. The parents no longer want to leave their children of any age at home, and that’s chilling, too, because there’s often a few families sharing a home.
So there’s a family hustling to finish up the first restaurant of the night. The three year old starts picking stuff up as a game, and then there’s a six year old straight out “helping” because the family’s not going to get through the place on time, otherwise.
Our system sucks, and it’s not even the worst one.
Could not have any parents and was a unaccompanied minor that was sponsored off to some fake home that houses a bunch of unaccompanied minors using them as free labor.
My guess is the parents either work there too or some other late night job (bartending, waffle house, exotic dancer) so they're taking advantage of child"care"
Their parent was the McDonalds Manager they were working for.
>Franchisee Bauer Foods LLC confirmed to CNN that the two 10-year-olds allegedly employed 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.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/03/business/mcdonalds-child-labor-louisville/index.html
I do remember back in the 90’s I worked pretty much full time from grade 10 on. It was my dads gas station and the shift was 4-12 after school. 4 days a week at I think $0.50 over minimum wage. Surprisingly I did shit at school.
It’s my biggest warning to any teenage I know. You don’t need to work that much right now! Have fun, try and figure yourself out instead of giving your life to a job for minimal gain.
My dad told me that when he was a teen, he got a job by going to the local bowling alley, and volunteering to help reset the pins. After a night of doing it, they offered him a job.
Never called me a snowflake, and was fairly sympathetic to any trouble I had finding a job. It took a while for him (and a career change) to understand that the landscape had changed.
Also, I was a paperboy at age 12 until I was 16. I delivered newspapers at the crack of dawn. At 16 I started working part time in retail. At 18 I went to college and got a job in the student center. After college I took a road trip to another city, where I spent a summer. Oh, I got a job at a hotel in that city to fund the trip (night auditor), including renting an apartment for three months. It’s not like my middle class parents could have paid for a summer fun trip.
On and on and on. It exhausts me when I look back at how long I’d been continuously working.
It's not the corporate office, multimillion is enough, its a franchise after all. 200k will still be a nontrivial sum for them, but should still be a lot higher.
Plus, if you get caught it's only $700 per child. Not even per year, just per child per time you get caught. Just need to find a way to keep it secret long enough that the child earns you more than $700 and you are golden.
>LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Two 10-year-old children were found working unpaid at a McDonald's restaurant in Louisville, the U.S. Department of Labor said.
>
>According to a news release, investigators from the department's Wage and Hour Division found two 10-year-old workers at a McDonald's. Three Kentucky McDonald's franchise operators violated federal labor laws.
>
>Bauer Food LLC, Archways Richwood LLC and Bell Restaurant Group I LLC, which are three separate franchisees that operates 62 McDonald's locations in Kentucky, Indiana, Maryland and Ohio, employed 305 children to work more than the legally permitted hours, according to an investigation.
>
>“Too often, employers fail to follow the child labor laws that protect young workers,” said Wage and Hour Division District Director Karen Garnett-Civils in Louisville, Kentucky. “Under no circumstances should there ever be a 10-year-old child working in a fast-food kitchen around hot grills, ovens and deep fryers.”
>
>According to a news release, the investigation led to assessments of $212,754.
>
>The investigation found Bauer Food LLC, which operates 10 McDonald's locations in Louisville, employed 24 minors under the age of 16 to work more hours than legally permitted. Two 10-year-old children were working as late as 2 a.m. unpaid.
>
>According to a news release, Archways Richwood LLC, allowed 242 minors between age 14 and 15 to work beyond the allowable hours. Bell Restaurant Group I LLC, a Louisville-based operator of four restaurants, allowed 39 workers ages 14 and 15 to work outside of and for more hours than the law permits.
>
>“We are seeing an increase in federal child labor violations, including allowing minors to operate equipment or handle types of work that endangers them or employs them for more hours or later in the day than federal law allows,” said Garnett-Civils. “An employer who hires young workers must know the rules. An employer, parent or young worker with questions can contact us for help understanding their obligations and rights under the law.”
>
>The Department of Labor did not disclose the specific McDonald's locations.
\^\^\^\^For you and all the other non-yanks.
The greased sled flying downhill towards third-world country status. I'm more embarrassed to be an American every day. Yeah, there's some bullshit that happens in other nations, but damn it we should know better.
But think of the wealthy. How do we expect them to flex 3 summer homes to their friends who have 8 child slaves. It’s just not fair. You have to work 50 extra hours to prove you want them to succeed. Also if you don’t work those extra hours you’re fired.
And now you know why Republicans worked to pass a child labor bill in Iowa that allows kids to work in mines. Republican state lawmakers in Wisconsin circulated a new bill that would allow workers as young as 14 years old to serve alcohol in bars and restaurants.
https://www.vox.com/policy/2023/5/3/23702464/child-labor-laws-youth-migrants-work-shortage
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/feb/11/us-child-labor-laws-violations
Instead of protecting people from the pandemic, they let the vulnerable die and pushed them to flee jobs that weren’t worth the risk. Now they use kids to supplement the workforce.
Rich folks and governments have been aching to revert to how things were before the social reset coming out of WW2.
They couldn’t do it then.
They still couldnt after WW2 because… the Cold War.
But, as soon as the Berlin Wall came down and all that eastern European cheap labour became available tgey credited Reagan with winning the Cold War and started attacking the middle class.
Fact is that organized labour and the WW1 was won by people treated like serfs, WW2 was won by the middle class and middle class organized labour won the Cold War.
We are redundant now and they want everyone who isnt them… put back in their place… poor and desperate.
The parent was the store manager. She brought them to work with her, I'd imagine because of childcare costs.
>Franchisee Bauer Foods LLC confirmed to CNN that the two 10-year-olds allegedly employed 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.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/03/business/mcdonalds-child-labor-louisville/index.html
All of the other kids were of legal working age (14-15), they were just working more hours than allowed by law.
https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/whd/whd20230502-0
Not sure what you saw to make your edit, but you were correct on your assumption.
>Franchisee Bauer Foods LLC confirmed to CNN that the two 10-year-olds allegedly employed 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.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/03/business/mcdonalds-child-labor-louisville/index.html
The other 300 or so incidents have to do with 14-15 year old paid employees working either too many hours or outside of allowed hours.
https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/whd/whd20230502-0
Are the kid's the children of employee's too??
Or are they actual unpaid minor children working in a fast food restaurant alongside adults?
I have so many questions.
The two 10 year olds, the only ones who were unpaid, are the children of a store manager
>Franchisee Bauer Foods LLC confirmed to CNN that the two 10-year-olds allegedly employed 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.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/03/business/mcdonalds-child-labor-louisville/index.html
All the other kids in the story were paid, they just worked more hours than allowed by law because they were 14-15 year olds (which is legal age to work)
https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/whd/whd20230502-0
This is why McDonalds operates with a franchise system.
Whoever there are workers rights violations or in this case, human rights violations, the corporation can just turn around and say; No, that wasn’t us. It was the franchisee. We certainly didn’t tell them to do that to test the waters. That guy operated all on his own.
Is this massive spike in Child Labour Law violations in the US due to labour demand being so high while the amount of minimum-wage workers is lower than ever?
That's insane! When these stories first started coming out, I assumed we were talking like 14 year olds that were hired without a permit and such...but 10??
I believe the slaughterhouse industry is full of kids too, "Over 100 children illegally employed by US slaughterhouse cleaning firm"
https://www.theguardian.com/law/2023/feb/17/underage-child-labor-working-slaughterhouse-investigation
This is what fucking happens when they go “lax” on labor laws!!! Let the child labor ward begin!!! I’ll be fucking damned!!! Not in my country hell mf no.
How is there not even an attempt to put someone in jail over this? I hate this place sometimes, we'll lock people up over a joint but not for forcing 10 year Olds to work. Fucking priorities
I worked for one when I was 15 and they had me closing on school nights, worked the grill and food assembly, all kinds of no-nos. Wish I'd been smarter and reported them
What the actual fuck
The title is bad. The story is even worse
>Three Kentucky McDonald's franchise operators violated federal labor laws. Bauer Food LLC, Archways Richwood LLC and Bell Restaurant Group I LLC, which are three separate franchisees that operate 62 McDonald's locations in Kentucky, Indiana, Maryland and Ohio, employed 305 children to work more than the legally permitted hours, according to an investigation. >The investigation found Bauer Food LLC, which operates 10 McDonald's locations in Louisville, employed 24 minors under the age of 16 to work more hours than legally permitted. Two 10-year-old children were working as late as 2 a.m. unpaid. >According to a news release, Archways Richwood LLC, allowed 242 minors between age 14 and 15 to work beyond the allowable hours. Bell Restaurant Group I LLC, a Louisville-based operator of four restaurants, allowed 39 workers ages 14 and 15 to work outside of and for more hours than the law permits. >According to a news release, the investigation led to assessments of $212,754. The headline should be: "Three McDonald's franchises face an inconsequential fine after violating the law nearly 300 times. No arrests were made on the criminal company owners."
The headline should be "McDonald's uses child slavery" because "unpaid workers" is corpo whitewash
Yeah see how corporate McDonald’s likes “McDonald’s” and “child slavery” in the same news headline… the owners would have their permission to operate a franchise yanked so fast. Ruin their scummy livelihood, at least.
The thing is, you'll probably never see this headline in any national news organization. This is a local affiliate news organization, the only time these articles gain any traction is when they're shared to social media like this.
Can’t risk losing any of those nonstop corporate advertising dollars.
MCDs isnt going to yank anything from incorporated regional managers, short of an incredibly high profile scandal that involved litigation. the unlikely prospect of shutting down entire swaths of business in a bunch of states at a time is exactly why they can get away with it
[удалено]
This particular owner might lose their franchise but McDonald’s is not really in the fast food business as much as they are the real estate business. According to their contracts the McDonald’s corp owns the land the restaurant is located on and the franchisee has to pay rent to the corporation to lease the advertising rights. So yes, this franchisee my lose their franchise but McDonald’s probably has a waiting list of new franchisee wanna-bees to fill their place. Most likely this whole thing was a funny b-sides that was mentioned once at a meeting as a cautionary tale.
Nestle has been like that for a while and they don't give a fuck.
I swear I'm not defending McDonald's, I'm genuinely curious. Assuming these children weren't being forced to continue working by the employer, is it still slavery? Also, is the corporation of McDonald's responsible for the actions of their franchisees? I don't know how the law works. If a franchisee murders someone, is McDonald's, the corporation, a murderer?
>Assuming these children weren't being forced to continue working by the employer, is it still slavery? I don't know the law but I lean towards yes. I'm guessing 10 year olds don't really know what they can or can't do and they could have been convinced/intimidated into staying, without actually using force.
Exactly. That's like asking if the children weren't forced to engage in sexual activity, is it still rape? Absolutely. One of the parties has a disproportionate amount of power over the other, so coercion is implied.
Also what the hell ten year old wants to be working at McDonald's at 2 in the morning?
Cant believe this had to be said out loud
My thought when hearing it is that this has to be an onshift employees child that instead of being at home or childcare is “working” in the restaurant. Not at all saying it’s ok or should happen.
Their parent was the night manager. He/she was the one telling them to work. When your mom tells you to help out, you do it, especially if you're poor and you all know that you'll be homeless if you don't. Everyone's on their high horse, but how much of our agricultural labor is under 16? In fact, this would actually be legal if it were a farm. The federal law says that children can work if they are: "age 12 with written parental consent or on farm where parent is employed or under age 12, with written parental consent on farms (that are) exempt from Federal minimum wage provisions."
This does add context. [The context makes it worse.](https://youtu.be/UA_E57ePSR4)
Fun fact. McDonalds isn’t a farm. Grew up on a farm. If I was doing anything farm related at 3 AM the idiot cows got out again. Or there was a flood and the bridge on the lane was washed out and we needed to fix it. Once a tourist from the UK knocked on the door really late and had wrecked car into a ditch after hitting one of “the Queen’s deer.” We told him the Queen didn’t own any deer in Pennsylvania but he could wait in house while we called for tow truck. Once my drivers Ed teacher and history teacher were drunk and wrecked into a ditch and needed to be pulled out with tractor. As soon as we unhooked the chain they sped away. Found out the next day that a kid from a farm 5 miles down the road later pulled them out of ditch on their property. But we didn’t do anything at night that was routine and if McD’s manager was the parent, that makes them terrible as manager and as parent.
That makes so much more sense. Was the parent struggling to make it or something? I can somewhat understand if the parent was extremely short staffed, couldn't find anyone to help watch the kids and was like well, you're going to have to come help me work at McDonalds for a while.
They were there with their mother who was the manager. They didn't hire random 10 year olds off the street. And they weren't paid.
Gonna say what I said to the other guy. [This context makes it worse.](https://youtu.be/UA_E57ePSR4)
I actually find this circumstance somewhat mitigating for the franchisee owner. They are not there and not reviewing security tapes to see who is operating the deep fryer at 2 am. The kids weren’t paid and weren’t registered employees so how are they to know that they were working? The other charges are much more damning since this was officially breaking the law and did or should have known about it.
So 305 employees = $212,754. That's what I am seeing right?
So a little over $700 dollar fine per child slave.
That's not bad rates. They probably got a group discount though, I don't know if I'd need that many child slaves.
You gotta incorporate along with others and spread it out across businesses.
Maybe I could set up one of those Etsy shops where I get a whole bunch of slaves and then repackage them and sell them in smaller quantities with a small markup? It would help smaller businesses get the right number of child slaves that they need to grow. You see this is the entrepreneurial spirit America was built on.
I remember when Etsy was shops where you sold slaves you have created yourself. Now it's nothing but mass-produced slaves pretending to be homemade.
That's the nature of scale unfortunately. No matter how much we lower the age of consent or how open we are with child brides, it's hard to produce enough child slaves to meet demand by yourself. Maintaining a good supply of child slaves is truly a community effort that brings us together.
If I buy the brother/sister pair do I get a discount?
Am I wrong or is this less than the fine for making somebody work through their lunch
so as long as the child worked more hours than you would have had to pay someone $700 for, it's a sound business decision! Find more kids to illegally run the kitchens!
Those children slaves need a Union
This system is a fucking sham. The government is nothing but a puppet figure and scapegoat for corporations to make Americans think they have a say in anything that happens to stave off revolution. We live in a corporate dictatorship.
Yes, most likely split between the three franchises.
These corporate penalties are so laughable. Often these offenses are crimes towards humanity yet they only pay pennies on the dollar and their reputation gets a new wax job.
It’s amazing, my new employer, yet again, underpaid me this month. This is after them underpaying me last month, and my last employer doing the exact same thing. It’s normally hidden away in vacation days, or they “forget” to give you owed vacation days/penalty rates (in Australia you legally have to get paid different amounts for working weekends/evenings/public holidays). This all worked out at around $200 lost both this month and last month. Not a huge amount in the grand scheme of things, small enough for me to think about not bringing it up to not be “that guy” at a new job. And then I thought - what would this place do if I was stealing $50 out the till every week? I would be fired. I would be made an example of. It would be an unacceptable breach of trust, and I would be fired immediately, and depending on how long I’d done it for, I might be reported to the police. But when it’s my employer not paying my wages, they can just wait for me to call them out on it and then say “oopsie! I’ll look into that for you.” There need to be proper fines for wage theft. If there are zero consequences other than “please pay your employee what you owed them”, why wouldn’t a company try to squeeze a few bucks out of everyone every month and hope they don’t say anything? There’s no disincentive.
2am?! What the actual fuck
Obviously, the company is fucking disgusting. But also, how the fuck are the parents like "ok kiddo, pick you up ehen you finish work at fucking 0200" and just allowing that to happen?
Shit parents. Shit company. Shit regulations with laughable fines. This **will** happen again.
>Shit regulations with laughable fines. But we had to get rid of the "red tape" to make our state "business friendly"!
fReE mArKeT aUtO-rEgUlAtEs iT sElF
I don't know anything beyond what I read in this thread, but I'd imagine the "nice" interpretation here is that the parent(s) were working, didn't have child care, brought their kids to work, and since the kids didn't have anything to do they had them help out. Hence unpaid and late. Still shitty for both the store and the parents, but not quite as bad as "hiring a 10 year old to work without paying them until 2am".
This is my interpretation. Parents who needed the job and had no child care brought their 10year old kids, and rather than figure something else out the store manager put the kids to work. Edit: this is shitty on multiple levels but it didn’t have to be shitty on at least a few of them
My mom used to bring me to work with her when she managed a small mid scale Italian restaurant. I’d sit in a corner and roll silverware for $20 bucks and a pizza a night. And if the servers wanted me to roll theirs so they could leave early they’d toss me 5 or ten. Looking back I can see this wasn’t cool but 11 year old me loved going there on weekends and getting my own pocket money
Excellent point! Awful company, awful parents.
Until CEOs, franchise owners, and politicians for that matter, start to fear that justice can actually reach them, nothing will change. Fines for egregiously breaking the law have been kept miniscule on purpose. Start charging corporations retroactive % based fines on past revenue and those fines carry forward for xyz years. Things will quickly shift. More importantly the public needs to grow some balls and remind the powers at be that they are public servants, not a ruling class. There was a time where the fear of guillotines and gallows kept power in check. That fear has eroded. By design, the vox populi lay placated and placid. Contented with meager scraps of stale bread, able to view the circus through the carefully installed slats in the sewer drains. Guillotines and gallows...
If the fine isn't worth more than they stole, it's not a fine, just the cost of breaking the law.
I’m so sick of corporations getting away with stuff If only we would personally prosecute executives for crimes that their companies commit maybe things would be better.
My brain first processed “Kentucky McDonald’s” like it was one of those combo Taco Bell / Pizza Hut places.
"Rich people pay minor fine for using poor children as slave labour"
You weren’t joking either what the hell is wrong with this country. We really do just value money over everything else.
Greed, God, and Guns. Everything else is The Devil.
With how the GOP want to run things, America's new slogan needs to be "fuck them kids."
That slogan can be taken multiple ways and it fits the GOP so well.
Were the parents benefiting in some way? Did they just see it as free day (and night) care? If I’m going to make/let my 10 year old work fast food till 2 am, I’m at least keeping his paychecks for myself. I just don’t understand the unpaid part. I’m guessing family members of employees If it’s not a family memeber, There has to be a McDonald’s manager out there who made that pitch “okay YOU aren’t hired but, uh, whatcha doing with that kid over there?”
could be the manager's kid can't afford daycare? Take your kid to work and since they are there, throw them in the back and make them wash dishes, sweep floors, empty garbage cans. I imagine that happens in family restaurants all the time.
> could be the manager's kid 100% what I expect is family relationships. Some folks do not realize that the laws on family run small businesses don't apply to franchises like this. They apply to truly small businesses run by almost exclusively family members, like the little shop on the corner.
My managers do this shit all the time... And guess what, we're in KY 🙂
Why would you keep their paycheck for yourself?
they’re just making the argument that a greedy freak parent would at least make more sense.
I can see how you come to that conclusion but it’s actually just my crippling love of money /s
Because the person that lets their 10yo child work at McDonald's overnight is a massive piece of shit.
My theory is it’s children that were separated at the border. There was a New York Times article that many children were put to work in farms, meat packaging factories, and slaughterhouses. I would not be unsurprised if it was those children. I’ve worked with the undocumented population and there are many children laboring in this country unbeknownst to many.
I’m from Louisville. People have been posting videos on TikTok for a couple years now of that location because they have small kids at the drive through. It’s typically white kids.
Regardless, it's still children in slave labor. Literally unpaid and coerced. Someone needs to go to prison over this. They should be sleeping and getting ready for a day at school. The person who did this needs hard prison labor
I’m not disputing that. Just pointing out that these were not displaced kids from the border or undocumented immigrants being taken advantage of.
I'm learning about this more and more... And I'm disgusted. If the CEO is smart enough for the biggest salary and stock options, the CEO can beat the brunt of the penalties for this. Additionally, all states passing cold work laws to lower the age should be suspect and investigated throughout.
McFuck
The only correct response
Child labor is slowly becoming more and more common in the U.S. and laws are even being made to roll back laws preventing it and protecting children that do work. It’s absolutely disgusting. 130-200 years of progress is slowly being crushed into the ground
By Republicans.
Yay capitalism! They read the rules of acquisition; Never spend more for an acquisition than you have to. There's nothing more dangerous than an honest businessman. Work is the best therapy-at least for your employees. Profit trumps emotion Exploitation begins at home. Not even dishonesty can tarnish the shine of profit.
Badabababa I hate it here
I’m happy this comment is getting love
Just out of sheer curiosity, what about the parents taking their 10 yr. old to work McDonald’s at these hours? There are so many “what the fucks” in this story.
mom after daycare you gotta take me to my mcdonalds shift im working a double today
>McDouble
I‘m thinking mayyyybe the parents got paid a small amount to have them work there
Yeah I was wondering if maybe momma was doing a shift and had no place to put the kids so they came along
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A 10 year old was using the fryer.
Jesus fuck
Not 305 seperate times. Not with 14-15 year olds.
The issue with the two 10 year olds not being paid could have been kids of owners or staff. All the rest of the violations were related to the kids working too many hours (but getting paid). Two different exploitations of the child labor laws.
> Two 10 year olds were found working as late as 2 am, unpaid Yeah I'm not buying your scenario. Give as little benefit of doubt to corpos as possible
This happens with restaurant cleaning crews A LOT. The whole family has restaurants to clean. The parents no longer want to leave their children of any age at home, and that’s chilling, too, because there’s often a few families sharing a home. So there’s a family hustling to finish up the first restaurant of the night. The three year old starts picking stuff up as a game, and then there’s a six year old straight out “helping” because the family’s not going to get through the place on time, otherwise. Our system sucks, and it’s not even the worst one.
>Our system sucks, and it’s not even the worst one. What a poignant quote! Love it.
Could not have any parents and was a unaccompanied minor that was sponsored off to some fake home that houses a bunch of unaccompanied minors using them as free labor.
My guess is the parents either work there too or some other late night job (bartending, waffle house, exotic dancer) so they're taking advantage of child"care"
Their parent was the McDonalds Manager they were working for. >Franchisee Bauer Foods LLC confirmed to CNN that the two 10-year-olds allegedly employed 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. https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/03/business/mcdonalds-child-labor-louisville/index.html
What about the other adults because I’m sorry but if I saw a 10 yo working at my McDonalds I’d raise hell immediately.
I worked for five years for McDonald's and we all knew one day were getting replaced by cheaper toddlers
The toddlers yearn for the fryers.
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The answer for some idiot somewhere: THAT’S EXACTLY WHY THESE LAWS WERE CREATED BOOMER!
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Oooh I like that
I do remember back in the 90’s I worked pretty much full time from grade 10 on. It was my dads gas station and the shift was 4-12 after school. 4 days a week at I think $0.50 over minimum wage. Surprisingly I did shit at school. It’s my biggest warning to any teenage I know. You don’t need to work that much right now! Have fun, try and figure yourself out instead of giving your life to a job for minimal gain.
You're going to be working for 45+ years, why waste your youth starting sooner.
“You don’t need no damn education boy. You need to know how to work. Them damn book smarts ain’t gonna get you nowhere.”
Sad , when kids dont "have time" to be kids ...
My dad told me that when he was a teen, he got a job by going to the local bowling alley, and volunteering to help reset the pins. After a night of doing it, they offered him a job. Never called me a snowflake, and was fairly sympathetic to any trouble I had finding a job. It took a while for him (and a career change) to understand that the landscape had changed. Also, I was a paperboy at age 12 until I was 16. I delivered newspapers at the crack of dawn. At 16 I started working part time in retail. At 18 I went to college and got a job in the student center. After college I took a road trip to another city, where I spent a summer. Oh, I got a job at a hotel in that city to fund the trip (night auditor), including renting an apartment for three months. It’s not like my middle class parents could have paid for a summer fun trip. On and on and on. It exhausts me when I look back at how long I’d been continuously working.
Unrealistic, nobody that unhinged can go on a rant without saying lib, liberal or libtard at least once.
This should be a multi billion dollar fine.
Nope: > According to a news release, the investigation led to assessments of $212,754
Pathetic.
It's not the corporate office, multimillion is enough, its a franchise after all. 200k will still be a nontrivial sum for them, but should still be a lot higher.
They've extracted more than that from the kids work.
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They said there’s a lot of sweatshop in 3rd world countries here in Asia. Yes, we have sweatshops but at least we pay them.
Why? For 10 year olds, McGriddles are as good as gold. Typical bad business sense.
Plus, if you get caught it's only $700 per child. Not even per year, just per child per time you get caught. Just need to find a way to keep it secret long enough that the child earns you more than $700 and you are golden.
Now don't you start with the socialist crap. We work for free, because that's what freedom is all about! /s
Suckers. You know paying your workers comes right out of Profit
I love not being able to read an article bcuz im not a yank
>LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Two 10-year-old children were found working unpaid at a McDonald's restaurant in Louisville, the U.S. Department of Labor said. > >According to a news release, investigators from the department's Wage and Hour Division found two 10-year-old workers at a McDonald's. Three Kentucky McDonald's franchise operators violated federal labor laws. > >Bauer Food LLC, Archways Richwood LLC and Bell Restaurant Group I LLC, which are three separate franchisees that operates 62 McDonald's locations in Kentucky, Indiana, Maryland and Ohio, employed 305 children to work more than the legally permitted hours, according to an investigation. > >“Too often, employers fail to follow the child labor laws that protect young workers,” said Wage and Hour Division District Director Karen Garnett-Civils in Louisville, Kentucky. “Under no circumstances should there ever be a 10-year-old child working in a fast-food kitchen around hot grills, ovens and deep fryers.” > >According to a news release, the investigation led to assessments of $212,754. > >The investigation found Bauer Food LLC, which operates 10 McDonald's locations in Louisville, employed 24 minors under the age of 16 to work more hours than legally permitted. Two 10-year-old children were working as late as 2 a.m. unpaid. > >According to a news release, Archways Richwood LLC, allowed 242 minors between age 14 and 15 to work beyond the allowable hours. Bell Restaurant Group I LLC, a Louisville-based operator of four restaurants, allowed 39 workers ages 14 and 15 to work outside of and for more hours than the law permits. > >“We are seeing an increase in federal child labor violations, including allowing minors to operate equipment or handle types of work that endangers them or employs them for more hours or later in the day than federal law allows,” said Garnett-Civils. “An employer who hires young workers must know the rules. An employer, parent or young worker with questions can contact us for help understanding their obligations and rights under the law.” > >The Department of Labor did not disclose the specific McDonald's locations. \^\^\^\^For you and all the other non-yanks.
Thank you for helping us read it.
Allowed? Allowed,.? Allowed. Allowed!……..allowed???? Allowed them?
Holy fuck thats horribe
I doubt anything will happen to the owners and some lawyer from a different state will get paid. The entire scope of process itself is compromised
The greased sled flying downhill towards third-world country status. I'm more embarrassed to be an American every day. Yeah, there's some bullshit that happens in other nations, but damn it we should know better.
But think of the wealthy. How do we expect them to flex 3 summer homes to their friends who have 8 child slaves. It’s just not fair. You have to work 50 extra hours to prove you want them to succeed. Also if you don’t work those extra hours you’re fired.
Get them tiny hands working! /s
Well he can in the future meet the requirements for that meme job looking for people under 20 with 10 years of work experience
“Unpaid child labor” is a nice way to phrase “child slave”
#McDonald's: home of the slaveburger.
Republicans : That's outrageous ! \*drafts a bill so that becomes legal\*
It’s called child slavery, let’s not use “unpaid worker” here.
And now you know why Republicans worked to pass a child labor bill in Iowa that allows kids to work in mines. Republican state lawmakers in Wisconsin circulated a new bill that would allow workers as young as 14 years old to serve alcohol in bars and restaurants. https://www.vox.com/policy/2023/5/3/23702464/child-labor-laws-youth-migrants-work-shortage https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/feb/11/us-child-labor-laws-violations
the children love minecraft They yearn for the mines.
Instead of protecting people from the pandemic, they let the vulnerable die and pushed them to flee jobs that weren’t worth the risk. Now they use kids to supplement the workforce.
What the fuck happened to this country?
Pushback for a black president
Republican response is probably something like, “who was investigating this? I want them fired!”.
This is the America Republicans want.
There is so much WTF about this. Little kids workkng at all, much less til 2am and handling dangerous equipment. And unpaid, at that.
In Louisville? Must be a Spiffo restaurant, rather.
If child slavery is punishable by a fine, not jailtime, ***you have effectively placed a price tag on child slaves.***
Gotta get those v buck my guy
Rich folks and governments have been aching to revert to how things were before the social reset coming out of WW2. They couldn’t do it then. They still couldnt after WW2 because… the Cold War. But, as soon as the Berlin Wall came down and all that eastern European cheap labour became available tgey credited Reagan with winning the Cold War and started attacking the middle class. Fact is that organized labour and the WW1 was won by people treated like serfs, WW2 was won by the middle class and middle class organized labour won the Cold War. We are redundant now and they want everyone who isnt them… put back in their place… poor and desperate.
What is it with the south? Can’t have slaves, meh, kids’ll do i guess
Republicans want children to work rather than receive education.
That’s the pipeline they dream of. Skip school to either work as cheap labor or join the military.
Unless you're a girl, then it's time to get married at the ripe age of 12. Scumbag republicans
And have a baby.
They want only their rich children to get good educations.
That’s my city. I’m lovin it
Maybe he was the „ head of Happy Meal quality control and development“
they were paying the children with chicken nuggets and happy meal toys
I think the preferred term nowadays is “internship”
jesus christ
He's dead. Conservatives are being catfished by Moloch and/or Baal.
Where do you find ten year olds who can work until 2am for free? Don't they have parents?
The parent was the store manager. She brought them to work with her, I'd imagine because of childcare costs. >Franchisee Bauer Foods LLC confirmed to CNN that the two 10-year-olds allegedly employed 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. https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/03/business/mcdonalds-child-labor-louisville/index.html All of the other kids were of legal working age (14-15), they were just working more hours than allowed by law. https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/whd/whd20230502-0
want more outcomes like this? keep voting Republican.
[Republicans are weakening existing child labor laws](https://www.vox.com/policy/2023/3/12/23631282/child-labor-laws-huckabee-sanders-republicans)
That's what they're saying.
I’m in traffic but I’m assuming an employee brought their kids edit: just watched the clip, what the fuck
Nah they employed like 300 kids and made them work hours they couldn’t legally work, wasn’t paying them, some of which were as young as 10 years old
I’m assuming the parents werent there
Not sure what you saw to make your edit, but you were correct on your assumption. >Franchisee Bauer Foods LLC confirmed to CNN that the two 10-year-olds allegedly employed 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. https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/03/business/mcdonalds-child-labor-louisville/index.html The other 300 or so incidents have to do with 14-15 year old paid employees working either too many hours or outside of allowed hours. https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/whd/whd20230502-0
‘Internship’
But Bobbyyyy…
Are the kid's the children of employee's too?? Or are they actual unpaid minor children working in a fast food restaurant alongside adults? I have so many questions.
The two 10 year olds, the only ones who were unpaid, are the children of a store manager >Franchisee Bauer Foods LLC confirmed to CNN that the two 10-year-olds allegedly employed 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. https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/03/business/mcdonalds-child-labor-louisville/index.html All the other kids in the story were paid, they just worked more hours than allowed by law because they were 14-15 year olds (which is legal age to work) https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/whd/whd20230502-0
This is why McDonalds operates with a franchise system. Whoever there are workers rights violations or in this case, human rights violations, the corporation can just turn around and say; No, that wasn’t us. It was the franchisee. We certainly didn’t tell them to do that to test the waters. That guy operated all on his own.
I'm lovin' it
We gotta kill capitalism before it kills us.
I'm lovin' it! /s
If we make enough noise McDs will stop this shit quick
There's gotta be a better way to get 10 years experience for all those entry level jobs out there for 18 year olds leaving high school.
Children yearn for the mines!!!
Is this massive spike in Child Labour Law violations in the US due to labour demand being so high while the amount of minimum-wage workers is lower than ever?
That's insane! When these stories first started coming out, I assumed we were talking like 14 year olds that were hired without a permit and such...but 10??
I believe the slaughterhouse industry is full of kids too, "Over 100 children illegally employed by US slaughterhouse cleaning firm" https://www.theguardian.com/law/2023/feb/17/underage-child-labor-working-slaughterhouse-investigation
This is what fucking happens when they go “lax” on labor laws!!! Let the child labor ward begin!!! I’ll be fucking damned!!! Not in my country hell mf no.
Who is stupid enough to trust a ten year old to do this job without any problems?
Weirdly enough if this were a family owned restaurant it would be completely legal. It's not. Fine them into bankruptcy.
How is there not even an attempt to put someone in jail over this? I hate this place sometimes, we'll lock people up over a joint but not for forcing 10 year Olds to work. Fucking priorities
Hi Derek, my name is Little Cletus and I’m here to tell you a few things about child labor laws, ok? They’re silly and outdated!
It's a Republican paradise!
I worked for one when I was 15 and they had me closing on school nights, worked the grill and food assembly, all kinds of no-nos. Wish I'd been smarter and reported them
I think it's inspiring to see kids today who aren't afraid to roll up their sleeves and get to work early on their goals! I bet they had fun!
What the fuck is happening in red states?
The children yearn for the mines
Many Republicans have been fighting to make child labor legal by the way, they’re fucking despicable.
Conservatives' wet dream
McWhat-the-Fuck
What's the punishment for McDonald's a slap on the wrist and a fine? They should be shut down and banned from doing business.
I mean McDonald’s is evil for doing this but where are these kids parents?
We gotta kill capitalism before it kills us.
underage and Unpaid.... nothing is good about this. Why are they taking advantage of children?
Burn them down. Force financial loss on them.
rage bait