Chipotle is fined $1.4M in vast child labor case
Faced with a mounting labor shortage and high employee turnover, restaurant chains have earned plaudits for offering incentives to workers to stay in the job longer — tuition payments, bonuses, even a four-day workweek.
But the shortage of workers also appears to have had a darker effect: a steady drumbeat of labor violations by operators who have cut corners to keep their restaurants fully staffed.
In the latest example, Chipotle Mexican Grill was fined nearly $1.4 million on Monday over accusations that it routinely violated Massachusetts child labor laws, with the authorities estimating more than 13,000 violations from 2015 to 2019, the Massachusetts attorney general’s office said.
The authorities examined the records of six Chipotle locations across the state, finding that the chain regularly let dozens of 16- and 17-yearold employees work more than nine hours per day and more than 48 hours per week, in violation of state law, according to the Massachusetts attorney general. The authorities then used those findings to estimate that Chipotle had violated child labor laws 13,253 times across 50 locations in the state.
Chipotle is not the only offender. Child labor laws vary significantly from state to state, making it difficult for national retail and hospitality chains to monitor all the differences. And with unemployment at 3.5%, its lowest level in decades, chains across the United States are struggling to recruit lowwage workers, putting pressure on restaurant operators to break the rules, according to employment lawyers and restaurant industry experts.
“Understaffing is a massive problem,” said Jonathan Maze, the executive editor of Restaurant Business Magazine. “You have companies that are stressed to try to fill hours and keep people on, and it can lead to violations.”
In August, Qdoba, another fast-casual Mexican chain, was fined nearly $500,000 by the Massachusetts attorney general for more than 1,000 breaches of child labor laws. And last week, the federal government fined a Wendy’s operator with restaurants in nine states for allowing minors to work outside normal business hours. A McDonald’s operator in Michigan and a Burger King franchisee in Massachusetts have also had to pay fines for breaching child labor rules.