Well, this certainly brings new meaning to the motto, “Where a kid can be a kid.” International pizza chain Chuck E. Cheese will be out a little dough thanks to the Department of Labor (DOL), which levied a series of fines against the company for violating child labor laws.
The DOL sunk its teeth into the pizza maker yesterday, fining it more than $28,000 for violations occurring at nine Northern California restaurants. According to reports, the restaurants allowed their teenage employees to run onsite trash compactors, which is a violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act that states that young employees cannot be allowed to engage in “hazardous jobs.”
And like adding extra pepperoni to the pie, two of the locations also allowed minors to run the dough-mixing machines.
The DOL’s Celeste Hale told the San Jose Mercury News that the violations turned up during a routine investigation earlier this year, and that the chain "immediately took actions to prevent it from occurring again."
She added that the two machines involved commonly crop up in probes related to illegal operating by young workers "because employers often don't know that you can't have minors operating this type of equipment."
For more, read the Mercury News.
