Are you complying with child-labor laws?

Many teenagers in the U.S. use dangerous equipment or work long hours during the school week, according to a Univ. of N.C. at Chapel Hill study.

A survey of 14- to 18-year-old workers showed 52% of males and 43% of females use dangerous equipment such as box crushers and slicers, or serve and sell alcohol despite federal child-labor laws prohibiting these practices.

Many teens younger than 16 years old reported working after 7 p.m. on school nights, which is illegal. About 1/3 of the teens surveyed said they had not received safety training. Others who were trained did not receive instruction in some critical areas, such as what to do in case of robbery or how to deal with fights among co-workers.

What steps are you taking to make sure teenage workers are safe? Have any training tips you can pass along?

--Sarah

Comments

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One year my daughter worked at one of those soup/sandwich/bagel stores. She was 15. First they oriented her to the fact that she couldn't operate any dangerous/sharp equipment. Then they trained her and put her to work on the bagel-slicer!