Child labor at Oakland, Tracy and Newark fast food restaurants draws fines

Nine months after fast food workers protested outside an Oakland Popeyes chicken restaurant alleging it illegally employed children, the U.S. Department of Labor has hit the franchise owner with fines and back-pay orders over child labor violations at that shop and two others in the region.

The owner “hired children as young as 13 years old and minors who worked later and longer than permitted by child labor laws” at the three restaurants, including Popeyes in Newark and Tracy, the Labor Department said Wednesday in a news release. “The employer shortchanged workers by depriving them of their overtime earnings for hours worked over 40 in a work week.”

The owner has paid more than $200,000 in fines, damages and unpaid wages, including $40,000 in overtime for 15 workers, $40,000 in damages for 15 workers, plus $121,000 in penalties for child labor violations and $12,000 for overtime violations, the Labor Department said.

Back wages and damages have been distributed to all but four of the workers, whom the Labor Department is still trying to find, said department spokesman Jose Carnevali.

Neither Mohammad Noor, sole owner of the Tracy and Newark Popeyes and 90% owner of the Oakland restaurant, nor the minority owner of the Oakland shop, Sedig Joe Amin, could be reached for comment.

In May, fast food workers held a protest outside that Oakland Popeyes, at 7007 International Blvd., waving colorful flags and beating drums after two teen employees of the restaurant filed child labor complaints with state regulators.

“Our employer has violated almost every law put in place to protect young workers like us,” employees Johmara Romero and Karla Palma Mendoza, both 17 and from Oakland, alleged in the complaint to the California Labor Commissioner.

The pair alleged that one of their co-workers started working a year-and-a-half earlier at 13, in 7th grade, and was working 40 to 45 hours a week, six days a week, with shifts until midnight on three school nights a week.

California’s child labor law bans employment of children 12 and 13 at any time on school days, or having them work more than 40 hours per week, and they are not to work past 7 p.m., or after 9 p.m. June 1 through Labor Day. The girl stayed on the same schedule when she was 14, also a labor law violation, the complaint claimed.