A protest against child labor outside a Popeyes in Oakland, CA | Fight for $15 Over the past few years child labor violations have surged across the food industry. Why? If it seems like child labor has been in the news a lot lately, that’s because it has. In recent months, a number of companies, many of them in the food industry, have been accused of violating federal and state labor laws by allowing children to work long hours in sometimes hazardous conditions. In early May, a Department of Labor investigation found that two 10-year-old children were working, unpaid, at a McDonald’s franchise in Louisville, Kentucky, operating dangerous deep fryers and sometimes working as late as 2 a.m. These children were among 305 child workers at McDonald’s locations operated by three franchisees in Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, and Maryland, and those operators now face more than $200,000 in collective fines. McDonald’s later said that the 10-year-olds were the children of a manager at the resta...