Three Kentucky based McDonald's franchises have been fined for
violating child labor laws.
Believe it or not, there are still some child labor laws in the country, and
these three franchises manage to violate them,
even though we're talking about Kentucky here.
But it's precisely the slap on the wrist that these franchises received that
honestly incentivizes them to continue exploiting workers and
in this case, children.
So let's give you the details on what's been reported here.
So Louisville-based Bauer Food LLC and Bell Restaurant Group I LLC,
as well as Archways Richwood LLC of Walton, Kentucky,
were assessed a total of $212,754 in civil penalties for the violations.
Now, that might sound like a pretty hefty fine, right?
It sounds like this is divvied up among three different McDonald's restaurants.
But no, the three franchises operate a total of 62 McDonald's
locations across Kentucky, Indiana, Maryland and Ohio.
So that's a lot of stores.
And when you think about the profits they get as a result of exploiting workers,
underpaying them, taking advantage of little teenagers, and
even kids, in this case as young as ten, well,
let's actually compare the profits to what the fine is.
Anyway, let's tell you what they did wrong,
why they got fined in the first place.
So apparently, all three franchises employed a total of 305 children to work
more than the legally permitted hours and perform tasks that are prohibited by law.
Bauer Food LLC, for instance, had employed 24 minors under the age of 16
to work more than legally permitted hours, including two 10-year-old
children who were employed at a McDonald's in Louisville.
Is this what we want in our country?
Ten year olds working at a fast food restaurant?
Some kids didn't even get paid, that should be mentioned.
So two children were employed but not paid, and
were given responsibilities such as preparing and distributing food orders,
cleaning the store, working at the drive through window, and operating a register.
Investigators also learned that one of the two children was allowed to operate
a deep fryer, a prohibited task for workers under 16 years old.
But I'm not even done.
There's even more to get into here.
But before I do, Cenk.
>> Yeah, so I've got a ten year old.
The idea of her operating a deep fryer is crazy.
It's super dangerous.
I would never, ever allow that, right?
But why are ten year olds working at these places?
Because people are desperate.
Because wages are so ridiculously low and people can't make a living.
Federal minimum wage is $7.25, that's $15,000 a year,
if you worked a whole year with no time off at all.
>> Cenk, I have to bring this up.
There was a study that was just done looking at the homeless population in
Los Angeles, and you wanna know what they found out?
9% of the unhoused individuals in LA are working at fast food restaurants.
9%.
That's a huge percentage of them.
>> Yeah.
And so that's the working poor.
They're trying to do what is right, but
you just can't make enough money at these starvation wages, so they're homeless.
Look, when I ran for office, there was somebody who was a volunteer for me,
social worker, and
had to live out of his car because the wages are too damn low, right?
But no one in power is ever gonna do anything about it, instead, they're like,
give me your ten year olds.
Let's go, let's put them to work.
And guys, we're at full employment, that's why they're going to the kids.
There is an easy fix to this, you know what it is?
Pathway to citizenship.
We could have a rational immigration system that says, hey, listen,
you don't just get to come in here and break the law, etc.
But there is a pathway, and the last proposal was if you work for 14 years,
that's like a lifetime, then you finally make it so
that you can get a green card, etc, and be on the path to citizenship.
That's not enough.
We need the workers anyway.
So why wouldn't we just go to the people who are desperate and hungry and
want to provide for their family and love this country and came here for hope and
do it in the legal way?
>> We know why.
Cuz they're brown and we don't want it.
We've got the great replacement theory.
We don't want white people replaced.
So instead we're gonna replace that with freaking ten year olds and
drive them into these dangerous work conditions.
>> Look, I don't think it's a coincidence that all of these policies
are happening simultaneously.
I think this is on purpose, this is my opinion.
But you have women's reproductive rights taken away, which means that
women are going to be forced to carry pregnancies to term and have children
that they might not have the financial situation to actually provide for.
There's that.
You have the loosening of child labor laws.
This is all happening simultaneously.
And you have the anti China rhetoric.
You have the discussions about what's happening at the board.
They don't want a pathway to citizenship.
Of course they don't want that.
And look, Republicans pretend like they have a big problem with undocumented
immigrants in the country, but their donors don't.
Their donors love exploiting that labor force.
>> And by the way, if they're illegal, it's easier to exploit them-.
>> Exactly. >> And pay them less money.
>> When you're legal, there are some rights in this country and
some protections.
>> So, look, two things about that, because it's related to this story.
There's this mythology they put out there, they go, look,
we're against undocumented immigration because they're taking our jobs.
But wait a minute, we're at record low unemployment.
The economists called this, at this point, basically full employment.
And in fact,
the employers are complaining we don't have enough people to hire, right?
And they're going to hire 14 year olds, 15 year olds, ten year olds, etc.
So wait, if we have open borders, as the Republicans say, my God, the caravans
are coming, they're flowing over the borders there's unbelievable, etc.
And they were supposed to take our jobs, but
apparently they didn't because we're at full employment.
So it was a lie all along.
Don't make your kids go to work,
force the politicians to pass laws that allow us to get paid decent wages.
That's actually the answer to all of this.
>> Just to give you some more details about one of the other franchises,
so that was a Bell Restaurant Group LLC.
They were discovered to have employed 39 workers between the ages of 14 and
15 to work outside of and for more hours than the law permits.
Some of these children worked more than the daily and weekly limits during
school days and school weeks, and the employer even allowed two of them to work,
this part really makes me enraged, work during school hours, meaning these
kids weren't going to school, they were working at this McDonald's instead.
Okay, so Archways Richwood LLC is another one, allowed 242 minors
between the ages of 14 and 15 to work beyond the allowable hours,
federal officials said in a prepared statement.
And this keeps going on guys, you wanna know something crazy?
I go on YouTube to see if there's any other news reporting on this,
there were a few news reports, local news reports mostly, but
what really stood out to me was how many other examples from previous years
there were of McDonald's in particular violating these child labor laws.
They keep doing it over and over again.
And the reason why they keep doing it over and
over again is because the punishment doesn't fit the crime.
They are profiting off of this practice.
They are profiting off of exploiting these kids.
And so when you slap them with a fine, it's like, all right,
cost benefit analysis we're gonna keep violating because the profits outweigh
the fine significantly.
>> 100%.
And by the way, you think the politicians don't know that?
They know that.
And they take money from the fast food industry,
the National Restaurant Association, Kyrsten Sinema, and
Joe Manchin famously went and
collected cheques right after they voted against the higher minimum wage.
They went to that organization and said, give me the bribes.
I mean, they did it right in front of everybody.
It was the most amazing thing in the world.
So that's why the government officials go, give a tiny little fine.
You give them a 200 million dollar fine instead of a $200,000 fine,
all of a sudden they're not gonna be hiring kids anymore, right?
But the politicians don't mind it either.
Look, I'm going to read one thing from our YouTube member we have,
it's both funny and tragic, and it gives you a good button to the story.
Leon Russo wrote in, did the kids get a happy meal?
>> Jesus.
>> I mean, that's the age you get a happy meal.
Instead, they're having to serve the happy meal so
that their family can make ends meet.
That's because we have a brutal system where we are getting so
badly squeezed that huge percentage of the country is working for
starvation wages and having to have their kids go to work as well.
>> Go to work in some cases instead of school.