It’s every employer’s nightmare scenario: A worker is severely injured on the job, or even killed. If that worker is a minor, the disaster becomes even more catastrophic.
Tragically, Northeast Wisconsin saw this worst-case scenario occur in July when 16-year-old Michael Schuls was killed at Florence Hardwoods after becoming pinned in a machine. Each year, about 70 teens die from work-related injuries in the United States, according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH).
Concerns about young workers and safety have been at the forefront of discussion as lawmakers in the Midwest and South have proposed relaxing laws surrounding child labor. In Wisconsin, one proposal would eliminate work permits for children ages 14 and 15 and another would allow workers as young as 14 to serve alcohol at bars and restaurants.
The proposals come amid ongoing concerns about worker shortages impacting Wisconsin manufacturers and other industries. But experts say employers must take extra steps to protect themselves and young workers, and to keep in mind special considerations when hiring young teens.
“I think we’ve got a perfect storm going on right now,” says Sarah DeArmond, chair of University of Wisconsin Oshkosh’s management and human resources department. “We’ve got a lot of employers that are scrambling for employees,” and sometimes in that scramble, “certain things get lost, and that’s scary — especially when we think about consequences.”
Young employees are at greater risk for several reasons, starting with having less work experience, DeArmond says. “There also could be some physical limitations, depending on what type of work,” she adds. They’re also still cognitively developing, and they are often brought into jobs with high turnover. “If the employee that’s training them doesn’t have that much experience in that job, what does that mean for the training?” DeArmond says. “So there are a lot of concerns.”
Additionally, young teens particularly can be vulnerable to being placed into situations for which they’re not ready. “I think part of the struggle is young people — especially that young, 14, 15 — are reluctant to say no,” says Vickie Patterson, executive director of the Bay Area Workforce Development Board. “They may not know that they can say no.”
Teens also have an underdeveloped perception of their own mortality, and while they may understand certain equipment can be dangerous, they may not believe they personally will get hurt, Patterson says. “So I do think that it really does fall on the employer to ensure that they’re following those rules,” she says, “and that they keep those young workers safe.”
Manufacturers and other employers need to be extra diligent about safety and requirements as they employ teenagers to help fill the worker shortage.
“I think there’s a fine balance there, because ultimately the rules are put in place for a reason,” Patterson says.
The proposals
In 2017, Wisconsin lawmakers eliminated work permits for 16- and 17-year-olds. A new proposal would do the same for 14- and 15-year-olds. The bill passed the state Senate in October.
Another proposal seeks to allow minors as young as 14 to serve alcohol in Wisconsin, which would be the youngest in the nation. The bill was referred to the Committee on State Affairs.
Lawmakers in other states also have proposed and passed legislation surrounding the work hours and types of work younger teens are allowed to perform. At the same time, violations of child labor laws are on the rise, according to a report by the Economic Policy Institute. In 2023, the agency reported that eight bills were introduced in six Midwestern states and Arkansas to lift certain restrictions on teen workers, including allowing them to work in industries currently considered hazardous.
In general, federal law prohibits teens under 18 from working in certain industries, including meat packing plants and sawmills.
In February, the U.S. Labor Department fined Wisconsin-based Packers Sanitation Services Inc. more than $1.5 million after it found the company had employed at least 100 children to clean and sanitize dangerous power-driven equipment like bone saws in meat packing plants in eight states, the Associated Press reported. The company has stated it wasn’t aware the workers were underage but has since added steps to verify the ages of its workers.
In September, Florence Hardwoods agreed to pay $191,000 in fines and to add new safety precautions, including discontinuing hiring employees under age 16. The company terminated all employees under 18 the day after Schuls’ death, the U.S. Department of Labor said.
What employers need to know
“Certainly, we have known for a long time there are particular concerns related to youth employees and their safety in the workplace,” DeArmond says. “Even if we go prior to the pandemic, the rates of injuries with employees that are young are higher.”
This topic has been high on the radar of NIOSH and OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which both have free resources for employers, including an index of prohibited work and information on young worker safety and health.
Employers should educate themselves on the current restrictions and parameters involving child labor. “And then beyond that, to look at the types of resources that are actually available that might help them, in educating their employees so that they can be safer,” DeArmond says.
DeArmond says educators and organizations also need to think more creatively about preparing young people for work, adding, “I think that this is happening.”
She says more collaborative arrangements are developing between companies, high schools, tech schools and universities. “I think there’s an opportunity there,” DeArmond says. “So maybe in the education arena there needs to be more done to educate young people on safety-related issues.”
To protect themselves and their employees, employers need to look carefully at what minors are allowed to do — which is usually dictated by work permits.
“They really need to look at the job that they’re going to place (teens) in, and how that job might need to be adjusted to be appropriate for a minor,” Patterson says. She says companies also need to train supervisors to ensure minors are never placed in roles that are inappropriate: “I think employers can utilize minors — it’s just going to be about what are those roles they can have, and are there parts of the job that they cannot do?”
Being proactive
“When it comes to workplace safety, as you might imagine, things work out best when we can be proactive in nature,” says Brad DeLeeuw, business development executive at McClone. “Let’s be clear — workplace accidents happen, and sometimes you’ve done all the things right.”
DeLeeuw says organizations need to first properly identify what needs to be fixed and what practices are already in place. Otherwise, “you’re going to be implementing solutions blind, and you’re just going to assume that because it worked for everyone else, it’s going to work for XYZ company — and that’s not how safety and that’s not how risk management works,” DeLeeuw says.
At the 2023 Manufacturing First Expo & Conference in October, DeLeeuw partnered with colleague Dustin Boss to explain to companies the importance of safety and OSHA record keeping and incident reporting. One issue McClone often sees with organizations is that there isn’t anyone solely dedicated to conducting safety audits, implementing safety best practices or acting as a full-time safety manager.
Oftentimes companies will say they’re not a large enough organization to support someone committed to safety or they’ll assign those tasks to someone who is also the HR director or office manager. “They’ve got a person wearing so many hats that it’s not even functionally possible for them to put any real focus on one thing. And if safety is something that falls into that bucket, that’s a big red flag,” DeLeeuw says.
In those cases, McClone can act as an extension of their team, offering safety training and other services, even more important to have if the proposed changes go through. It’s important to have someone dedicated to safety because “sometimes the landscape of the working marketplace is changing so rapidly, sometimes on a weekly basis, that if you don’t have someone dedicated to it, you’re going to miss stuff.”
Creating a safe workplace starts with proper training procedures — particularly when it comes to young workers. The bar that you have to reach with an adult to help them to be effective and safe on the job is very high, DeLeeuw says.
“When you start peeling that back to a 19-year-old, 18-year-old, a 17-year-old, perhaps a 15-year-old — that bar gets so much higher,” he says.
While DeLeeuw says he’s not for or against young teens working in any particular industry, “what I am in favor of is recognizing that the bar that you need to get to with someone of that age is so much higher the younger they are.”
Implementing top quality on-the-job training, safety best practices and regular safety audits are “really about giving each employee the tools and resources to do their job effectively, but more importantly to do their job safely,” DeLeeuw says. Without those aspects, companies are at “a higher risk of things going wrong than companies that do have those sorts of things in place.”
On the web
dwd.wisconsin.gov/er/laborstandards/workpermit/minoremployment.htm
