Entries by Reid Maki

U.S. DOL News Release: Court orders operators of 14 Bay Area Subway locations to pay employees nearly $1M in wages, damages; sell or shut down their businesses

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News Release/U.S. DOL/September 29, 2023 Labor Department finds employers endangered children, bounced paychecks, stole tips SAN FRANCISCO – The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California has ordered the owners and operators of 14 Bay Area Subway restaurants to pay employees nearly $1 million in back wages and damages after federal investigators found they directed children as young as 14 and 15 to use dangerous equipment and assigned minors to work hours not permitted by law; failed to pay employees their wages regularly, including by issuing them hundreds of bad checks; and illegally kept tips left by customers. In a rare action, the court’s order requires the owners to sell or shut down their businesses by Nov. 27, 2023, a term the department insisted on to resolve the case. The action comes after the department’s Wage and Hour Division found these and other violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act by John Michael Meza and his wife, Jessica L. Meza, who had franchise agreements with franchisor and operator Doctor’s Associates LLC to operate the restaurants in Antioch, Clayton, Concord, Cotati, Napa, Petaluma, San Pablo, Santa Rosa, Vallejo and Windsor. Investigators also found the employers interfered with the division’s review by coercing employees not to cooperate and threatening children who raised concerns or tried to exercise their legal rights. The department’s investigation also […]

Child Labor Personal Experience: Growing Up in the Fields

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by Jacqueline Aguilar, Child Labor Coalition intern   I grew up in a small rural area named Center, Colorado which has a population of about 2,000 people. Growing up my parents were always working in the fields, I remember my father coming home from work, and I would feel how raspy his hands were on my face. I would always ask myself, “Why are his hands so rough?” Eventually, I realized it was because of the hard work he did every day. In middle school, buying school clothes was difficult for my parents. I started working in the lettuce fields at the age of eleven with many of my friends. We would go in at 5:00 am and get out around 2:00 pm, my parents couldn’t take me to work because they had their own job to get to, so I would have to catch a ride with my supervisor at 4:30am and get home around 3:00 pm. Walking down those lettuce fields was draining physically, and mentally. It consisted of tired feet walking down the field with my blistered hands holding a bulky hoe and keeping an eye out on the lettuce heads making sure they grew the right way. Most days would start with the fields cold and wet with dew. I was often drenched in mud. By […]

Amazing, must-listen podcast….“Why Are States Loosening Child Labor Laws?” –New York Times child labor reporter Hannah Dreier and the CLC’s Norma Flores López on Roy Woods Jr. video podcast, “Beyond the Scenes – The Daily Show”

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Amazing, must-listen podcast….   “Why Are States Loosening Child Labor Laws?” —New York Times child labor reporter Hannah Dreier and the CLC’s Norma Flores López on Roy Woods Jr. video podcast, “Beyond the Scenes – The Daily Show”. [Recorded 4/23/23].  

Joint Letter by Humanity United, Child Labor Coalition, and Valued Partners: Urgent Action Needed to Protect Children from Labor Exploitation

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May 1, 2023 As organizations working to address human trafficking and labor exploitation, we are appalled by the horrific conditions children experienced after fleeing to the United States for refuge. This series in the New York Times demonstrates our government’s inability, unwillingness, or outright refusal to protect minors from forced labor. This most recent story reveals that the federal government failed to act on multiple warnings and reports about migrant children being forced to work illegal shifts in auto factories, food packing plants, construction sites, and other poorly-regulated jobs. The Times reports that despite hundreds of calls reporting incidents of abuse, neglect, or trafficking, thousands of migrant children have been forced to work illegally within the U.S. The Biden Administration reportedly “treated these as discrete events, not as signs of a mounting problem.” Other recent stories, including the Department of Labor’s own statements, reveal that this is a mounting problem, and one that needs urgent action. Earlier this year, the Labor Department reported that it had seen a nearly 70 percent increase in child labor violations over the last five years, and that in the most recent fiscal year, more than 800 companies were found to have broken child labor laws. Across the globe, businesses capitalize on migrant workers’ vulnerability, specifically targeting them for exploitation. Migrant workers already face language, […]

U.S. DOL News Release: Three McDonald’s Franchises in Kentucky Pay $212,000 in Fines after Federal Investigations Find 305 Minors — Including 10-year-olds — Working Illegally

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USDOL News Release May 2, 2023 Louisville-area franchisees employed minors to work later, longer than law permits LOUISVILLE, KY – Working in a kitchen late at night near dangerous cooking equipment is a reality for many adults in the food service industry. But finding 10-year-old kids in such a work environment is a cause for concern and action by the U.S. Department of Labor. Investigators from the department’s Wage and Hour Division found two 10-year-old workers at a Louisville McDonald’s restaurant among many violations of federal labor laws committed by three Kentucky McDonald’s franchise operators. The investigations are part of the division’s ongoing effort to stop child labor abuses in the Southeast region. The division investigated Bauer Food LLC, Archways Richwood LLC and Bell Restaurant Group I LLC – three separate franchisees that operate a total of 62 McDonald’s locations across Kentucky, Indiana, Maryland and Ohio – and found they employed 305 children to work more than the legally permitted hours and perform tasks prohibited by law for young workers. In all, the investigations led to assessments of $212,544 in civil money penalties against the employers. “Too often, employers fail to follow the child labor laws that protect young workers,” explained 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 […]

Iowa’s Child Labor Bill Turns Priorities Upside Down

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By Mike Owen, Common Good Iowa Posted on February 9, 2023 at 12:01 PM by Mike Owen A new proposal in the Iowa Legislature turns Iowa priorities and values upside down. At a time we are doing too little for economic opportunity for children and their families, lawmakers are looking to relax protection for minors in the workplace as an excuse to meet a workforce shortage. The bill, Senate File 167 is one more step down a low road that lets employers off the hook for low wages, and this Legislature off the hook for already poor workplace protections. Worse, it puts young people at risk. Common Good Iowa is registered against the bill, which today passed a Senate subcommittee. For our young people, we should aspire to more than making them tools or pawns in a workforce strategy that will most certainly fail. If we want more people in the workforce, we need to pay them and to protect them. We need to assure them critical access to child care, and to crack down on wage theft. This bill fails on each count. Putting kids to work at longer hours and in potentially risky work assignments isn’t a real answer for a workforce shortage, and it’s rarely going to be an answer for young people as they proceed toward […]

Do Children in America Ever Work in Deplorable, Dangerous, Dickensian Conditions?  The Short Answer is “Yes” — The Child Labor Coalition’s Top Ten U.S. Child Labor Developments in 2022

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By Reid Maki, Child Labor Coalition   Most Americans are unaware that the U.S. still has child labor, but 2022 made it abundantly clear that we do, and stories in the news exposed conditions that were often downright shocking. Here are 10 child labor stories or developments that indicate child labor in the U.S. is not something in the past and continues to be a serious concern. The  Child Labor Coalition brings together 39 groups to work collectively to reduce international and domestic child labor and to protect working teens from occupational dangers. Our top 2022 U.S. developments: Minors found working illegally in Brazilian-owned JBS meatpacking facilities in Nebraska and Minnesota. Several children suffered caustic chemical burns, including one 13-year-old. The children worked on the killing floor in cleaning crews, toiling long nights in the graveyard shift and used dangerous pressure-washing hoses while they stood in water mixed with animal parts. Initially, the number of children numbered 31 in Nebraska and Minnesota, but U.S. DOL has suggested the number of illegally employed teens in processing plant cleaning crews may be much larger. The CLC has expressed concerns about teens illegally working in meat processing plants since a large immigration raid in Iowa in 2003 found 50 minors working illegally in the plant. Teens found working in an Alabama factory that […]

Reflections on the “5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour” in Durban, South Africa, May 15-20, 2022

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The recently-concluded, week-long “5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour” in Durban, South Africa was convened against the backdrop of the announcement last July of an alarming rise in child labor numbers after two decades of steady and significant declines in global child labor totals. The global conference, which typically comes about every four years, brought together an estimated 1,000 delegates from foreign governments and small number of representatives of NGOs. It also brought together for the first time at one of the quadrennial child labor conferences, dozens of participant youth advocates as well as a number of child labor victims and survivors. The conference had the difficult mission of righting the ship and trying to reverse the rising child labor numbers, which seem destined to rise further as the COVID pandemic’s impact will continue to be felt for years. Sadly, the pandemic threw 1.6 million children out of school, often for prolonged periods and some of those children entered work and may never return to school. We would first like to thank the South Africa government for the herculean task of organizing a global conference during a still raging pandemic, all against a backdrop of devastating floods in April that savaged the provinces of KwaZulu-Natal and Easter Cape and killed nearly 500 people, destroyed 4,000 homes and […]