The San Jose Mercury ran an interesting piece recently about a wage and hour audit at the family pizza chain, Chuck E. Cheese.
You might recall from ads that the company boasts that at Chuck E. Cheese, a “kid can be a kid.”
What the Merc tells us is, the Chuckster not only likes to feed, kids; it likes to hire ’em, too.
According to the article, the company recently was fined more than $28,000 by the U.S. Department of Labor for violating child-labor laws, the Merc. tells us.
The violation: permitting teenage employees to run trash compactors in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act.
Interestingly enough, the violations were found during a routine audit.
Employers should take away too lessons from this cheesy tale:
– You never know when DOL wage and authorities will come knocking. So it’s never safe to let your guard down.
– The laws governing which pieces of equipment youngsters can use are complex.
Several Thompson products home in on this complex area of the law. Among them the Employer’s Guide to the FLSA the FLSA Employee Exemption Handbook. Find out more about these publications and Thompson’s full line of HR Compliance Products at www.thompson.com.