Protecting Youth at Work Health, Safety, and Development of Working Children and Adolescents in the United States (1998) / Chapter Skim
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7 Conclusions and Recommendations
7 Conclusions and Recommendations
Pages 212-236
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From page 212... ...
Children and adolescents have high rates of work-related injuries. In addition, for adolescents, working long hours during the school year is associated with alcohol, tobacco, and drug use; minor delinquency; lack of adequate sleep and exercise; increased rates of cropping out or Sign scnoo~; and decreased overall educational attainment.
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From page 213... ...
Guiding Principle 4: Everyone under 18 years of age has the right to be protected from hazardous work, excessive work hours, and unsafe or unhealthy work environments, regardless of the
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From page 214... ...
Educational efforts target the behavior of individuals young people and their parents, employers, teachers, and mentors. While such efforts are an indispensable part of any public policies to protect the health and safety of children, experience in injury prevention has found that legal remedies often result in more rapid and larger changes in occupational safety and health than reliance on individual behavioral change alone (see Chapter 6~.
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From page 215... ...
The conventional injury surveillance datasets, such as workers' compensation and the Department of Labor's Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses, need to be supplemented by data from broader resources, such as ambulatory care data, which captures a much greater range of the work-related injuries sustained by the general population. Almost completely lacking is information about the health hazards to which young workers are exposed: Very little information is currently available, and the committee could not identify any surveilIance focus on such hazards.
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From page 216... ...
· Existing data systems, including the Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries, the National Traumatic Occupational Fatality Surveillance System, the Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses, and the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System, should be evaluated to assess the extent to which they capture and generate representative data on work-related injuries sustained by youngsters. · The Bureau of Labor Statistics, with the assistance of the Wage and Hour Division, should include information on violations of federal child labor laws in the CFOT database for fatal incidents involving individuals under the age of 18.
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From page 217... ...
Even in the standard prevention counseling guidelines for young people, occupational safety and health issues are not mentioned. · All federal agencies that collect data on the occupational injuries and illnesses sustained by youngsters should improve efforts to disseminate this information to state and local public health practitioners who are responsible for injury control and adolescent health.
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From page 218... ...
The Current Population Survey only asks about work performed by those aged 15 and older, although research and anecdotal evidence suggest that many children and adolescents hold their first jobs at ages much younger than 15. Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FESA)
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From page 219... ...
Recommendation: The Bureau of Labor Statistics should `develop methods to generate reliable estimates of youth employment at the state level. Many agencies, including the National Center for Health Statistics, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, the National Center for Education Statistics, the Bureau of Justice Statistics, and the Occupational Safety
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From page 220... ...
Age groups: Current reporting of data by groups, such as "under 20" or "15-to-24," ignore critical social and behavioral changes that occur during adolescence, as well as the dividing age that legally defines minors (under the age of 18~. More appropriate age groupings are essential for addressing issues related to child labor.
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From page 221... ...
Examples of the types of approaches that could be tested include the following: · Regional resource centers could be funded to provide technical assistance to schools, employers, and local government agencies regarding the health and safety of young workers. The activities of such centers might include conducting qualitative research to identify the gaps in information; developing and disseminating appropriate materials on health, safety, and well-being to various key audiences, including health care professionals, educators, parents, and employers; developing educational curricula for teaching children and adolescents about workplace health and safety; facilitating the adoption of curricula in schools and work-based learning programs; and facilitating collaboration among government agencies at the state and focal levels to develop programs and policies to enhance the health and safety of young workers.
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From page 222... ...
Occupational Health and Safety in School-to-Work Programs The purpose of the School-to-Work Opportunities Act of 1994 was to leverage other resources to foster partnerships, at the state and local levels, that would build systems to support the transition
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From page 223... ...
D Perkins Vocational and Applied Technology Education Act, and the fob Training Partnership Act)
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From page 224... ...
The criteria for being designated as a commendable workplace for young workers might include the following: · adhering to all child labor laws and regulations; · maintaining a safe and healthy workplace; · providing information to young workers about industry-specific and workplace-specific safety risks, employees' rights (e.g., when and how to lodge complaints) , protective practices, and pertinent child labor laws and regulations; · providing adequate training (regarding such things as handling equipment and following workplace procedures, including emergency procedures)
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From page 225... ...
PROTECTIVE MEASURES The regulatory standards developed decades ago to protect youth from hazardous work, excessive hours, and unsafe or unhealthy work environments do not reflect contemporary work hazards and the important changes in rates of school attendance and youth employment, particularly among 16- and 17-year-ofUs. Youth are currently subject to different standards depending on whether they work in the public or private sector, in small or big businesses, in different industries, and in businesses covered by state or federal laws.
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From page 226... ...
While conclusions about positive benefits have been questioned in some analyses (one study found that the apparent increase in earnings disappeared after carefully controlling for unobserved differences among groups of students and that it was the students who did not work at all during high school who had the highest earnings a decade later) , the findings suggest that attention will need to be given to how to specify the circumstances under which the benefits outweigh the negative consequences of high-intensity work by adolescents.
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From page 227... ...
One method to arrive at the appropriate restrictions would be for the Department of Labor to establish an expert advisory committee charged with recommending what specific limits should be placed on allowable work hours for youngsters aged 16 and 17 and what, if any, exceptions to these limits should be permitted. In addition to the number of hours worked per week, the advisory committee should also investigate whether hours per day and start and stop times of work, particularly on school nights, should be included in the regulation.
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From page 228... ...
Recommendation: The Department of Labor should undertake periodic reviews of its hazardous orders in order to eliminate outdated orders, strengthen inadequate orders, and `develop a`~fditional orders to address new and emerging technologies and working conditions. Changes to the hazardous orders should be based on periodic reviews by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health of current workplace hazards and the adequacy of existing hazardous orders to address them.
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From page 229... ...
from similar hazardous occupational conditions, inclucling those caused by chemical exposures or dangerous machines, regarcIless of the types of industry or the workers' relationships to their employers. The current distinction between agricultural and nonagricultural industries is frequently artificial.
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From page 230... ...
Under current law, young workers in agriculture are not entitled to the same health and safety protection as in those other industries. Only a few Occupational Safety and Health Administration standards apply to agriculture.
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From page 231... ...
In addition, such a study should review the application of hazard communication standards developed under OSHA and the standards under the EPA's Worker Protection Rule to identify gaps in the coverage of agriculture. Recommendation: To ensure the equal protection of children and a`dolescents from health and safety hazards in agriculture, Congress should undertake an examination of the effects and feasibility of extending all relevant Occupational Safety and Health Administration regulations to agricultural workers, inclu`ding subjecting small farms to the same level of OSHA enforcement as that applied to other small businesses.
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From page 232... ...
Health Protection, should report on the extent to which existing occupational health and safety and pesticide standards take into consideration special risks for young workers. In a`d`dition, the Task Force on Environmental Health Risks and Safety Risks to Children, create`d by Executive Order 13045, should ensure that its `definition of children include older children and adolescents and includes exposures to children and adolescents at work.
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From page 233... ...
Publicizing violations of child labor laws is analogous to a public health agency's identifying restaurants found in violation of proper food handling procedures, and it is likely to have the same deterrent effect. To prevent unwarranted punishment, only serious, willful, or repeated violators should be so identified.
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From page 234... ...
. Recommendation: The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and the Occupational Safety and Health A,4ministration, with the assistance of representatives from state workers' compensation programs, should study and report on the adequacy of current workers' compensation coverage, utilization, and indemnification for young workers.
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From page 235... ...
Such research requires increased knowledge about the risk factors (hazards, level of training and supervision, fatigue, and so on) that lead to workplace injuries and illnesses among children and adolescents, as well as evaluation of injury prevention efforts.
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From page 236... ...
236 PROTECTING YOUTH AT WORK · Research to determine whether the developmental characteristics of children and adolescents put them at increased risk from factors in the work environment, including chemical, physical, ergonomic, and psychosocial conditions (such as stress or type of supervision)
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