More than 300 children, including two 10-year-olds, were found working at McDonald's restaurants across Kentucky and several other states in violation of federal labor laws, the Labor Department said Tuesday.

In one case, investigators found two 10-year-olds were working unpaid and until as late as 2 a.m. at one McDonald's restaurant in Louisville operated by Bauer Food LLC, which is based in Louisville, the department said in a news release.

The two children prepared and distributed food orders, cleaned the store, worked at the drive-thru window and operated a register, investigators found. One of them was also allowed to operate a deep fryer, a task prohibited for workers under the age of 16 under federal law.

Most of the restaurants, 45 of the 62, were in Kentucky, according to data released by the department.

The revelation was part of an investigation into the child labor law violations in the Southeast. The agency also found three franchisees that own more than 60 McDonald's locations in Kentucky, Indiana, Maryland and Ohio, "employed 305 children to work more than the legally permitted hours and perform tasks prohibited by law for young workers" the Labor Department said in a statement.

The franchisees, Bauer Food, Archways Richwood and Bell Restaurant Group, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. CNN has also reached out to McDonald's for comment.

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i guess we're starting to see why the gop want to outlaw abortion smfh

After Illinois passed the country’s first law protecting child influencers last week, a feeling of optimism swept over Sarah Adams. For years, she and other advocates against child exploitation have warned about the dangers of sharing children’s lives on social media for profit. The law would ensure financial compensation for minors, defined as children under 16 years old, who are featured in vlogs, or video blogs. While Adams is not based in the U.S., she and other activists who spoke with NBC News said they are excited by the news. They believe the legislation marks a precedent that could encourage similar action in states across the country. “There is a lot of excitement that these conversations are not only being had, but that legislation is being enacted to protect the income that these kids are generating,” said Adams, a 38-year-old mother of two from Vancouver who calls out child exploitation online with her platform of more than 270,000 TikTok followers. “Because we need to be realistic: It’s the children that are generating the income for these families.” Ethical concerns around “sharenting” have come under increasing scrutiny in recent years as family vloggers and parenting influencers continue to build massive followings online. Advocates have called out the harms of invading children's privacy and compromising their digital safety for clout or monetary gain, especially without informed consent.

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Republicans are lying when they say they care about the safety and wellbeing of children.

Napoleon and Child Labor Laws:

“Napoleon was the first in France to be concerned about the condition of children and had a decree adopted on January 3, 1813 prohibiting the work of children under 10 years old.”

“Across the Channel, the same ban had been in effect since 1801 and concerned children under 8 years old. This was a major breakthrough especially for young miners forced to work in coal mines; many of them died of this terrible labor. Unfortunately, unscrupulous bosses took advantage of the fall of the Empire two years later to send this decree into oblivion.”

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An esthetician is under investigation for making her 5 year old daughter wax women clients... and as people have been rightfully pointing out on tiktok -apart from child labour laws violations evident here -the fact that this parent let her daughter do this in VERY inappropriate places is a form of abuse. All the women (24 of them!) who let a child do Brazilian waxes need to be put on a sex offenders list.

I feel so terribly for this child -this BABY -because she doesn't deserve any of this or what is most likely going to happen to her and it breaks my heart since she is already being held in protective custody. A child should never be exploited and exposed to grown adults like this. There is a HUGE difference between instilling hard work ethics in your children in many ways as they grow and learn -and when they're much older showing them APPROPRIATE elements of the work you as an esthetician if they are interested or curious but a 5 year old does not understand ANY of this and cannot fully consent to something like this.

I'm hoping for the best for this young child.

For the third time in five weeks, a 16-year-old boy has died after sustaining on-the-job injuries at an industrial site, as lawmakers in several states advocate loosening child labor laws that protect minors from hazardous work.

The latest teen death was Friday night at the Mar-Jac Poultry plant in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, authorities said. It’s the third worker death at the plant since December 2020.

Duvan Tomas Perez, who NBC News reported moved to the U.S. from Guatemala six years ago, was cleaning machinery as part of a sanitation crew when he became trapped in equipment on a conveyor belt. He died at the scene, police and the poultry company said.

The company said that it appears that the child “should not have been hired” and that his age and identity were misrepresented on his hiring paperwork with an outside staffing company.

“We are devastated at the loss of life and deeply regret that an underage individual was hired without our knowledge. The company is undertaking a thorough audit with the staffing companies to ensure that this kind of error never happens again,” it said in a statement Thursday to HuffPost.

His death follows two other teens’ deaths in Wisconsin and Missouri.

Michael Schuls, 16, died on June 29 after sustaining injuries at the Florence Hardwoods logging company in Florence, Wisconsin. Michael was attempting to unjam a wood-stacking machine when he became pinned under machinery on a conveyor belt, resulting in what the coroner identified as traumatic asphyxiation, The Associated Press reported.

Will Hampton, 16, died on June 8 in Lee’s Summit, Missouri, after becoming injured while working at the Lee’s Summit Resource Recovery Park landfill. The high school sophomore became pinned between a tractor-trailer rig and its trailer, resulting in his death, police said in a statement.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is investigating all three deaths, a Labor Department spokesperson confirmed to HuffPost.

OSHA has also made a referral to the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division for possible child labor violations concerning hazardous occupations in the Wisconsin case and a separate referral in the Missouri case to determine if the child was legally employed.

Federal labor laws allow children 16 and older to be employed in all occupations as long as the jobs are not declared hazardous by the Secretary of Labor. The Labor Department’s website features a list of such hazardous occupations and specifies that “most jobs” in meat and poultry plants ― including equipment cleaning ― are banned.

Minors are also prohibited from being employed “inside and outside of places of businesses that use machinery to process wood products,” with a few exceptions, including if an adult relative supervises the child.

The Wisconsin teen’s father also worked at the sawmill and was at the site that day, Green Bay station WBAY reported, though the child was alone in the building when the incident happened, and he wasn’t found until 17 minutes later, The AP reported.

In the case of the Mississippi teen killed, the child wasn’t working directly for Mar-Jac Poultry as he had been hired by an outside agency. “These hiring companies often aren’t the most reliable when it comes to finding qualified, legal workers,” said Jordan Barab, former deputy assistant secretary of labor at OSHA from 2009 to 2017.

“These temp agencies don’t have any scruples at all. They don’t have any national reputation to uphold. They’re just trying to sell workers, basically,” he told HuffPost. “And then the main company claims they had no idea, the temp agency [says it] was ‘fooled by false certifications.’ Well, obviously this kid did not look 18.”

OSHA has been going after this “to a certain extent,” he said, with the administration citing both the place of employment and the hiring company when a regulation is broken.

Barab partially blamed the nation’s ongoing shortage of labor for the hiring of children because employers are trying to avoid paying more for qualified workers.

“You have some employers who are basically going after the most vulnerable workers, the workers with the least ability to fight back or question anything. Who could be more vulnerable than (A) children and (B) immigrant children?” Barab said.

The COVID-19 pandemic, affordable child care, a rise in remote work and retiring workers are among the reasons cited for the labor shortage.

Regardless of the risks, lawmakers in several states have proposed weakening child labor protections in a bid to expand the workforce with low-paying labor.

In Wisconsin, where one of the three children died, lawmakers are advocating for lowering the age to serve alcohol in bars and restaurants to 14. It would be a nationwide first if approved, according to the National Institutes of Health.

Another bill introduced in Minnesota proposes allowing 16- and 17-year-olds to work in or around construction sites.

In Iowa, the state Senate in April passed a bill that would allow children to work more days and longer hours, but in conflict with the current limits set by federal law, as Iowa State Daily reported.

The Biden administration back in April urged U.S. meat companies to ensure they are not unknowingly or knowingly hiring children illegally. This followed revelations that more than 100 children were working for a company that cleans slaughterhouses. The children’s work included handling hazardous equipment, like razor-sharp bone saws.

An estimated 160,000 children are injured annually in the U.S. while working. Of these injuries, 54,800 warrant emergency room treatment, according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.

The number of minors employed in violation of child labor laws has increased by 37% within the last year, according to a March report by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute in Washington. The report identified 10 states that have introduced or passed bills within the last two years that would weaken child labor standards.

What in the actual fuck is wrong with the state of Florida?

If Republicans want to start forcing 16 and 17 year olds to work 40 hour weeks, then the fucking voting age should be 16.

Fucking. pricks.

Here’s the tweet that apparently sent them over the edge

when you combine this with the efforts to extend retirement age to 70 and over, it's very clear that our politicians, but specifically gop conservatives, are hell-bent on sacrificing the population at the altar of capitalism. they want us to start working earlier and to work longer into our lives, all while not paying a living wage and raising the price of just about everything. it is the continuing evil of capitalism run amok.

Monogram Meat Snacks was slapped with a $140,164 fine after a Chandler, Minnesota factory run by the company was found in violation of child labor laws. The manufacturer is a subsidiary of Monogram Food Solutions LLC, which operates 13 factories across seven states and produces items like Wild Bill's Jerky, Bull's Snack Sticks, and Butterball Smoked Turkey Sticks. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the company had 11 or more children between the ages of 15 and 17 years old working at its Minnesota factory. Underage employees were even tasked with operating dangerous machinery. During an investigation that began in March 2023, the Labor Department temporarily banned the company from shipping its meat and cheese products from the facility. In July 2023, the DoL initially fined the company $30,276, after it was revealed that the facility employed two minors, aged 16 and 17. The additional civil penalty, which the company agreed to pay on October 5, comes following the discovery of nine more underage workers.

A lot of people are going to be injured, assaulted, and possibly killed.