The owners and operators of six Sonic Drive-In restaurants in northwestern Nevada have paid more than $70,000 in civil penalties for allegedly violating federal child labor laws.
Federal investigators from the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division determined that SDI by Neil LLC, which operates as Sonic Drive-In, committed more than 170 violations of the child labor provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act.
These include assigning employees under the age of 16 to work longer hours than federal regulations allow and assigning them tasks deemed too dangerous for younger workers, such as operating manual fryers, the department said Monday in a statement
“While learning new skills in the workforce is … valuable as teens grow up, federal law dictates how employers must protect children by making sure their first jobs are safe and not interfere with their education or welfare,” Wage and Hour. The division’s district director, Gene Ramos, said in the statement.
According to federal investigators, one of the restaurant owners also hired a boy who was 13 at the time of the job, a year younger than the legal age to work in restaurants and other non-farm jobs.
Neil’s SDI and its owners Taylor M. Cain, Ian N. Cain and Quinn M. Cain paid $71,182 in civil penalties for violations that occurred at restaurants in Reno, Sparks, Carson City, Fallon and Minden.
As part of the settlement, the owners also agreed to pay $274 in overtime owed to two teenagers who were denied overtime for more than 40 hours a week.
Sonic Drive-In did not immediately respond to CBS MoneyWatch’s request for comment.
Suppress child labor
Federal investigators have begun cracking down on child labor violations, conducting thorough investigations into companies that employ children and hitting offenders with heavy fines.
In 2022, the DOL fined a food safety sanitation company $1.5 million after it found more than 100 children between the ages of 13 and 17 working with “sharp saws” and “caustic chemicals” at 13 of the company’s meat processing plants in eight states. The case was one of the most important in the history of the Department of Labor.
Child labor violations have increased by 69% since 2018, according to the BAD. Between 2018 and 2022, more than 15,000 children were found to be working illegally, data of the show department.
As rates of child labor rise, the Labor Department has asked Congress to increase the amount of money that employers who hire children illegally can be fined.
“The maximum civil money penalty under current law for a child labor violation is $15,138 per child,” the DOL said in February in a statement. “This is not high enough to be a deterrent to large, profitable companies.”
