As school ends, teenagers across the country begin searching for summer jobs. The National Consumers League (NCL) would like to urge young workers and their parents to select their jobs carefully—many jobs teens perform in the U.S. are dangerous. Federal statistics show that every five days a young worker is killed on the job. Over 230,000 are injured each year, according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.
Many teens lack the experience to protect themselves from workplace hazards. They may be reluctant to refuse to do dangerous tasks or hesitant to ask for safety information. Often employers fail to train young workers in proper safety protocols. Loopholes in federal child labor laws also expose young workers to danger. For example, a worker must be 18 to drive a forklift at retail warehouse, but a 16-year-old is legally allowed to drive a forklift at an agricultural processing facility.
The National Consumers League issues the 2008 Five Worst Teen Jobs to remind teens and their parents to select their summer jobs carefully and to think about their safety while they work.
We urge parents and teens to acquaint themselves with the laws that protect working teens. Read what a teen can and cannot do at www.yothrules.dol.gov. The site provides information on a state-by-state basis. NCL has also assembled tips for teens who work and their parents here.
Many jobs pose potential dangers to young workers. The five jobs on the list have proven to be especially dangerous based on anecdotal evidence and federal statistics.
Harvesting.
More than half a million youth help harvest our nation’s crops each year. Farms may look bucolic and pretty, but they have proven to be quite dangerous workplaces, especially in fields where heavy machinery like tractors are used. Every summer, young farmworkers are injured by or lose limbs to tractors and machinery. Heat stress and pesticides pose additional and often grave dangers. Suffocation in grain silos is another lethal hazard. Below are just a few examples of fatal incidents involving young workers:
- In May, Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez, a 17-year-old farmworker died in San Joaquin County, California of heat stroke after working nine hours in a vineyard. Jimenez was pregnant at the time.
- In January, Edilberto Cardenas, 17, was killed in a Groveland, Florida citrus grove. It was his first day on the job. Cardenas was emptying bags of oranges into a truck when then truck backed over him.
A 10-year-old Florida youth accidentally ran over his 2-year-old brother while driving a pickup truck in a Florida orange grove. The boy had driven the truck since he was 8 years old while family members were working in the grove. (December 2006)
A 13-year-old Illinois youth died after he became entangled in the beaters of a forage wagon. The boy was helping his cousin feed cattle in a farm pasture. The death occurred when the young man climbed on the front of the wagon to dislodge clumps of hay. The legs of his pants became entangled in the rotating beaters. The youth was spending the summer at a relative's farm in Minnesota where the accident occurred. (September 2005)
A 12-year-old Indiana youth died when he was sucked under corn and suffocated as he worked to grind corn into feed on his family’s farm. (July 2004)
Agriculture is the most dangerous industry for working teens. Between 1992 and 2000, 42 percent of all work-related fatalities of young workers occurred on farms. Half of the victims in agriculture were under age 15. For workers 15 to 17, the risk of fatal injury is four times the risk for young workers in other workplaces, according to U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. Many farm deaths occur to the children of farmers on their parents’ farms. However, the same dangers that imperil the sons and daughters of farmers endanger hired farmworkers.
Loopholes in current labor law allow children to work in agriculture at younger ages than they are permitted to work in other industries. It’s legal in many states for a 12-year-old to work all day under the hot summer sun with tractors and pickup trucks crossing the fields, but that same 12-year-old could not be hired to make copies in an air-conditioned office building.
Exemptions in the law allow teens working on farms to perform tasks deemed hazardous in other industries when they are only 16—as opposed to 18 for the other industries. In agriculture, a 16-year-old can work inside fruit, forage or grain storage units, which kill workers every year in suffocation accidents. They can also operate dangerous equipment like corn pickers, hay mowers, feed grinders, power post hole diggers, auger conveyors and power saws.
Children working on family farms with their parents are not protected by safety laws.
Parents should not allow their children to take a sales job that requires them to travel. The dangers are too great. Without parental supervision, teens are at too great a risk of being victimized.
This May, the Spokane, Washington police investigated a 16-year-old’s claim that she was held as a captive worker by a traveling sales crew. She escaped after the crew leaders beat up her boyfriend because he wasn’t selling enough magazines.
Traveling sales companies often charge young workers for expenses like rent and food, requiring them to turn over any money they make from selling magazines or goods – which are sometimes scams against consumers based on products that don’t exist. When they try to quit or leave the crew, they are told they are not free to go.
Traveling sales crew workers are often asked to go into the homes of strangers—a very dangerous thing for a young person to do.
Other possible dangers:
Robbery: Working in unknown neighborhoods poses risks, especially if young people are carrying money from sales or goods to sell.
- In April 2003, a 16-year-old Texas youth selling candy was robbed and shot in the stomach by two teens.
Reckless driving: traveling sales crews often have accidents and in many cases we’ve seen, crew leaders are driving without licenses or driving on suspended licenses.
Two young salespersons, age 18 and 19, were ejected from a vehicle and pronounced dead at the scene after an accident in which 15 members of the crew were crammed into a 10-year-old SUV, which rolled over on a highway in New Mexico (September 2002).
Desertion: young salesmen have been stranded if they try to quit or do not sell enough.
Exposure: crews often work in bad weather, walking miles in blazing heat or in freezing cold.
Arrest: crews often operate without proper licenses and permits and young sales people are subject to arrest.
Sexual exploitation: young workers, far from home, are at special risk of exploitation from older crew leaders and crew members.
- A 19-year-old Ohio magazine sales person was assaulted by three men who expressed an interest in buying magazines. The victim was waiting for a pickup by co-workers when she was approached, abducted, and sexually assaulted (April 2003).
At any given time, there are as many as 50,000 youth under the age of 18 involved in youth peddling crews. Children as young as 10 have been employed.
The National Consumers League has material on our Web site that young workers should look at before they consider taking a traveling sales job.
Work in Heights
Construction is often ranked as one of the most dangerous occupations in America. Young workers are especially at risk given their relative inexperience on work sites and dangers construction sites often pose.
According to NIOSH, youth 15-17 working in construction had greater than seven times the risk for fatal injury as youth in other industries, and greater than twice the risk of workers 25-44 years of age working in construction. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, more then 1,200 workers died in construction accidents in 2006—one in five workers killed on the job were killed in construction accidents. It led all other industries in fatalities. Most critically, 30 construction workers under the age of 18 were killed in the year.
- Bendelson Ovalle Chavez, a 17-year-old resident of Lynn, Massachusetts, was fixing a church roof when he fell 20 feet to his death. Employed by the company two months earlier, he had received no training on how to protect against falls, according to a report by the Massachusetts AFL-CIO and the Massachusetts Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health.
- In July 2007, James Whittemore, 17 died while taking down scaffolding at a construction project in Taunton, Massachusetts. The teen was helping his father when a pole he was holding fell against a high-voltage electrical wire, electrocuting him. The boy died in his father’s arms.
- That same month, in a neighboring state, Travis DeSimone, 17, was working on a Marlborough, New Hampshire farm, converting a barn into a kennel, when a concrete wall collapsed and killed him.
Roofing, siding, sheet metal work, electrical work, concrete work all pose serious hazards. Falls, contact with electric current, transportation incidents, and being stuck by objects are among the most common causes of construction accident deaths.
Falls have consistently ranked among the leading causes of workplace deaths.
Federal child labor law prohibits construction work for anyone under 16 years of age (although youths 14 and 15 may work in offices for construction firms if they are away from the construction site).
Labor law related to work at heights has some inconsistencies. Minors 16 years and older may work in heights, as long as they are not on a roof. They can work on a ladder, scaffold, in trees, and on structures like towers, silos, and bridges. Clearly these structures pose as much or more danger from a fall as roofs, yet the law inexplicably allows young people to work on them.
Forklifts, tractors, and all-terrain vehicles pose dangers for young workers.
Forklift, Tractor, and All-Terrain Vehicle (ATV) Deaths
- In March 2008, a 15-year-old boy suffered a serious leg injury in a Portland, Oregon wrecking lot when a 17-year-old co-worker operating a front loader knocked over a stack of cars and knocked down part of a concrete wall onto the younger boy. The boys were working illegally, since under Oregon law no one under 18 is allowed to work in an auto wrecking area, or operate a front loader, according to The Oregonian newspaper.
- John Sanford, 18, a forklift operator, mistakenly thought he put his forklift in park. The machine was in neutral and when Sanford walked in front of it, he was pinned between a trash receptacle and the lift. (December 2007)
- A 17-year-old in California died when the forklift he was operating at a grain and hay store rolled over on him. The youth had only been employed one hour and misguidedly took the initiative to operate the forklift. (June 2004)
- In Iowa, an 8-year-old was killed helping his father and neighbor chop hay for silage on their dairy farm. The youth was driving to and from a field on a 4-wheel ATV hooking up each silage wagon. He drove up a slight embankment causing the ATV to roll over on its top and pinning him to the ground. (Summer 2004).
- A 13-year-old Arkansas youth died when the ATV he was driving tipped over on a levee between catfish ponds. The minor was pinned under the water and drowned. (March 2003).
ATVs result in tens of thousands of serious injuries of youth under 16. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission reported that in 2004, 130 children under the age of 16 died in ATV accidents.
Forklift Injuries and Deaths:
Each year, nearly 100 workers are killed in forklift accidents. Another 20,000 workers are seriously injured in forklift-related accidents. Many of these injuries occur when they are run over, struck by, or pinned by a forklift. U.S. child labor law mandates an age of 18 to operate a forklift unless it is being operated on an agricultural facility—then the youth operating the forklift can be 16. We can think of no rationale for this different safety standard. Child labor advocates in Washington are asking the federal government to raise the age to 18 for all operators.
Tractor Injuries and Deaths:
Tractor-related incidents are the most common type of agricultural fatality in the U.S. Increasingly, tractors are being used in non-agricultural industries, like construction, manufacturing, and landscaping. Tractor overturns are the most common cause of tractor fatalities (47 percent), and including among youth workers are responsible (63 percent).
Outside Helper:
Landscaping, Groundskeeping, and Lawn Service
· A 15-year-old Florida youth died of electrocution while trimming trees. The youth was standing on an aluminum ladder holding a pole saw. (May 2005)
· A 16-year-old Oklahoma youth died when he was struck by lightening while working as a general laborer for a landscaping company. The youth was standing in the bed of a dump truck, where he was manually moving pallets of rocks from the truck to a front-end loader. The youth had worked for the company for three weeks. (July 2004)
· A 15-year-old Maryland youth was killed when he fell into a mulch spreading truck. The machine, called a bark blower, churns mulch with a large spinning device called an auger and then disperses it through a hose. The machine had jammed and the teen had gotten on top of the truck to see why the mechanism wasn’t working. He had been with the company for only a few weeks. (May 2004)
Landscaping, groundskeeping, and lawn service workers use hand tools such as shovels, rakes, saws, hedge and brush trimmers, and axes, as well as power lawnmowers, chain saws, snow blowers, and power shears. Some use equipment such as tractors and twin-axle vehicles. These jobs often involve working with pesticides, fertilizers, and other chemicals. Recent anecdotal evidence indicates that young workers are using power tools and machinery and are being injured as a result.
Workers are at risk of tractor and ATV runovers and rollovers; tree limb cutting; lifting/carrying inappropriately heavy loads; chemical, pesticide, and fuel handling or exposure; power tools and heavy equipment operation and contact; flying debris; contact with underground or overhead electrical cables; operating and exposure to grinders, chippers, sod cutters, and chainsaws.
Federal Child Labor Law
Minors who are age 16 and older may be employed in landscaping, to include operating power mowers, chain saws, wood chippers, and trimmers. The operation of all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) or tractors for non-agricultural labor is only prohibited if the equipment is used for transporting passengers, an activity prohibited for minors under age 18).
There are many benefits to having teens work to earn extra money during the summer and, for some, throughout the school year. However, the workplace can be a very dangerous place for teenagers. The National Consumers League, long an advocate for working teens, believes parents should be informed about which jobs pose the greatest danger to their children and how to protect their young workers to avoid these jobs. Safer alternatives usually exist, and parents and teens should consider those alternatives. Employers must comply with child labor laws, provide training to young workers, and be vigilant about providing a safe work place. The U.S. Department of Labor and state agencies must enforce the law and conduct regular reviews to ensure that new workplace hazards are dealt with. Existing inequities in child labor policy such as allowing agricultural workers to perform hazardous jobs at younger ages should also be dealt with.