Child labor, mayhem, lewd comments to teen girls alleged at Oakland Popeyes

Children as young as 13 worked illegally, female teen employees were subjected to sexually suggestive comments, and security guards contributed to violent mayhem at a Popeye’s fried-chicken restaurant in Oakland, newly filed worker complaints to state regulators claim.

Popeyes said it learned Thursday morning about the worker complaints filed Wednesday with CalOSHA and the California Labor Commissioner, and immediately shut down the restaurant.

“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 labor commissioner.

One of their co-workers started at the restaurant a year-and-a-half ago when she was 13, in 7th grade, and has been working 40 to 45 hours a week, the complaint to the labor commissioner claimed. “From the start she has been working 6 days a week, including working until midnight three school nights each week,” the complaint alleged.

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 who allegedly started at the Popeyes at age 13 stayed on the same schedule when she was 14, also a labor-law violation, the complaint claimed.

Child labor, including at fast-food restaurants, has become an increasingly volatile and high-profile issue across the U.S. Early this month, the U.S. Department of Labor, citing a nation-wide increase in child-employment violations, said it had fined three McDonalds restaurants in Kentucky a total of $212,000 after investigators found 305 minors, including two 10-year-olds, working illegally. In February, the agency announced fines for illegal child labor at Popeyes, Subway, Burger King and Frodo’s Pizza restaurants in South Carolina, with the Popeyes franchise owner ordered to pay $4,000 in penalties and back pay for breaking laws related to work hours and overtime.

The two 17-year-olds also alleged to the labor commissioner that they have both been working as late as 11:30 p.m. on school nights, and on longer-than-legal shifts, including 6 1/2 hours on school nights and 10 hours on other days.

Under state law, kids 16 and 17 can legally work four hours on a school day, eight hours on non-school days or any day preceding a non-school day, for a maximum of 48 hours per week, and they are not to work past 10 p.m., or 12:30 a.m. on nights preceding a non-school day.

“I would get out late and I would just shower and go to sleep and sometimes I wouldn’t get enough sleep and I wouldn’t make it to class the next morning and I would fall behind,” Romero told this news organization Thursday afternoon, an hour before a planned strike and protest outside the shuttered restaurant.

They girls also alleged that a female manager called them prostitutes, asked one of them if she liked small or large male genitalia, and asked another minor “if the hair on her head matched the hair on her genitalia.”

Romero said she started at the Popeyes in February as a cashier, mostly in the drive-through. She alleged in her complaint to the labor commissioner that she was victimized by a child labor violation about once every two weeks. She was once called into work at noon on a school day because the restaurant was short staffed, so she skipped school for the rest of the day, she alleged.

The teens also alleged that the restaurant’s security guards were too poorly trained to properly address conflicts in the restaurant.

“Two weeks ago one of our security guards threatened to kill a customer who entered the store,” Romero said in the complaint to CalOSHA, the state’s workplace health-and-safety regulator. “I know he pepper sprayed two people just last month.

“One day while I was working he pepper sprayed an unhoused woman who was refusing to leave and I watched her run out covering her face. Another day when I arrived to pick up my check there were ambulances around because he had pepper sprayed someone else.”

Popeyes said it started investigating the allegations Thursday. “We will not tolerate any violation of employment laws and if any of these allegations prove true, we will take action against this franchisee,” the company said in an emailed statement.

The complaint to the labor commissioner included a state document identifying the franchise owners as Mohammad Noor and Sedig Joe Amin. Neither could be reached for comment.