Hearthside Food Solutions Illinois Child Labor Settlement

Who Is Eligible?

You may be eligible to file a claim if you:

• The administrator's wording, in full: any individual who worked at a Hearthside Food Solutions facility in Illinois between 1 March 2020 and 4 December 2024, and who was under the age of 16 for some or all of the time they were working there. December 2024 is the date the agreement was signed, which is what closes the window.
• It is about where you worked, not where you live now. The facility had to be in Illinois. The claim form accepts an address in any state, so moving away since has not cost you anything.
• Being under 16 for part of the time is enough. You do not need to have been under 16 for the whole period. Your payment is calculated from the weeks you worked while you were.
• Most people in this group were placed by a staffing agency rather than hired by Hearthside directly, which is why the agreement asks for staffing agency payroll records. It does not put you outside the class.
• Immigration status makes no difference. The administrator is asked this directly and answers no.
• Your documents are not passed around. The administrator reviews them to check eligibility and shares them with nobody except the Illinois Department of Labor, and then only as far as processing a payment requires.
• Missing paperwork does not automatically end it. If you cannot produce the documents, the administrator asks you to contact them, and the Chicago Workers' Collaborative will help you establish that you worked there as a minor at no cost.

How Much Can You Get?

Read the $4.5 million carefully, because it is not a claimants' fund. Hearthside pays that amount to the Illinois Department of Labor. The agreement then says up to half of it will be used to make payments to claimants, and that the administrator's costs come out of the same $4.5 million. The money actually being shared is therefore in the region of $2.25 million.

The formula is written into the agreement. Take 50% of the settlement amount, divide it by the total number of weeks worked by everyone whose claim is approved, and multiply by the number of weeks you worked while under 16. That is your payment.

Two things follow from that. Weeks are the only thing that varies your share, so what happened to you does not change the figure. And because the same half is split across everyone who files, a larger number of approved claims lowers the rate per week for everybody.

No per-person figure has been published, and nobody can honestly quote you one. It depends entirely on how many people come forward and how long each of them worked. Anyone giving you a dollar amount for this settlement is guessing.

Anything left over goes back to the state. Whatever remains when the claims period ends reverts to the Department's Child Labor and Day and Temporary Labor Services Enforcement Fund rather than being redistributed among the people who did claim.

Timing: the administrator expects to distribute payments in the first quarter of 2027. Hearthside's payment itself is conditional on approval by the bankruptcy court handling its parent company's case, which is a real contingency rather than a formality.

How to File Your Claim

File with the administrator:

• File at hearthsidefssettlement.com, run by Atticus Administration under the supervision of the Illinois Department of Labor and the Attorney General's office. There is a Spanish version of the whole site.
• You do not need a claim ID. The form is open to anyone who says they worked there as a minor, and it runs in four steps.
• Get two kinds of proof together. Something showing your age at the time you were working, and something showing when you worked at the Illinois facility. Staffing agency payroll records, pay stubs or a staffing agency employment agreement all serve the second purpose.
• If you cannot find the documents, say so rather than giving up. The administrator asks you to get in touch for help, and the Chicago Workers' Collaborative on (630) 824-7724 will help you prove you worked there as a minor free of charge. They will also sit with you and fill the form in.
• You can keep your tax number off the web form. The administrator takes a Social Security or taxpayer ID number by phone on (800) 410-0649 if you would rather not type it online.
• Fill in your employment start and end dates as accurately as you can, since weeks worked while under 16 is the only input that changes what you are paid.
• Submit by 20 November 2026. There is no extension mechanism described anywhere in the agreement, and the claims period closing is what triggers the leftover money going back to the state.
• Nothing is signed away by filing. The release in this agreement is given by the State of Illinois, not by you, so making a claim does not affect any rights you may have of your own.

Frequently Asked Questions