Two 10-year-olds were found working at McDonald’s, where they prepared and served meals, worked the drive-thru and the cash register and cleaned the store, according to federal labor officials.
The children would occasionally work as late as 2 a.m. and were never paid at a McDonald’s restaurant in Louisville, Kentucky, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
The restaurant let one of the 10-year-olds use a deep fryer, a task workers under the age of 16 aren’t allowed to do under federal law as it’s considered dangerous equipment, labor officials said.
“It’s prohibited for a 10-year-old to be working at a McDonald’s franchise,” Juan Coria, the department’s Wage and Hour Division regional administrator for the Southeast, told McClatchy News in an interview on May 2.
The children are two of 305 minors under the age of 16 who the agency’s Wage and Hour Division investigators learned were working illegally at McDonald’s restaurants in Kentucky, Indiana, Maryland and Ohio, the Department of Labor announced in a May 2 news release.
The 62 McDonald’s restaurants are run by three franchisees: Bauer Food LLC, Archways Richwood LLC and Bell Restaurant Group I LLC, according to officials.
To address the child labor violations, they were ordered to pay $212,754 in fines, officials said.
McClatchy News reached out to Bauer Food LLC and Archways Richwood LLC on May 2 and didn’t immediately receive a response. McClatchy News was unable to immediately find contact information for Bell...
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