MADISON, Wis. — A Wisconsin Burger King franchisee was accused Friday in what Gov. Tony Evers’ office called the\u00a0largest determination of child labor and wage payment violations in the state’s modern history.<\/p>\n
Cave Enterprises Operations LLC, which operates 105 Burger King franchises in Wisconsin including seven within the greater Madison area, allegedly committed more than 1,600 violations affecting over 600 Wisconsin children.<\/p>\n
According to Evers’ office, the Wisconsin\u00a0Department of Workforce Development found that the violations occurred over a two-year stretch ending in January 2025.<\/p>\n
“Here in Wisconsin, we have proud history of making sure workers are treated with dignity and respect, and that\u2019s especially true when it comes to our kids,” Evers said. “We have a responsibility to make sure kids who are working are protected from exploitation, predatory employer practices, and being subjected to hazardous or illegal working conditions, and that\u2019s a responsibility we must take seriously.”<\/p>\n
The DWD began investigating Cave after a review found 33 separate child labor and wage payment complaints were lodged against franchises between 2020 and 2023.<\/p>\n
According to Evers’ office, the investigation found 593 children aged 14 and 15 were allowed to work without a child labor permit, and 627 minors worked shifts of six hours or more without a state-mandated meal break. Hundreds of minors under age 16 allegedly worked outside the allotted hours for school-age workers or for more hours than school-age workers are allowed.<\/p>\n
The DWD sent a letter to Cave, ordering the employer to pay affected employees all unpaid wages, overtime wages and penalty wages. All told, Cave will need to hand over more than $230,000 to employees.<\/p>\n
Cave was also made to pay an $828,000 fine ($500 per violation), and the DWD said it will pursue enforcement in court through the Wisconsin Department of Justice if the payments to employees and the fine aren’t submitted in a timely fashion.<\/p>\n
\u200bCOPYRIGHT 2026 BY CHANNEL 3000. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. THIS MATERIAL MAY NOT BE PUBLISHED, BROADCAST, REWRITTEN OR REDISTRIBUTED.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MADISON, Wis. — A Wisconsin Burger King franchisee was accused Friday in what Gov. Tony Evers’ office called…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":453663,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[5611,28,212337,212340,28757,212338,212339],"class_list":["post-453662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-burger-king","tag-business","tag-cave-enterprises-operations-llc","tag-child-labor-law-violations","tag-tony-evers","tag-wisconsin-department-of-justice","tag-wisconsin-department-of-workforce-development"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=453662"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453662\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/453663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=453662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=453662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=453662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}