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Teenagers at Risk
Every year about 15,700 Canadian teens (15 – 19 years old) get badly hurt at work. Tragic scenarios such as a teen suffocating to death under a pile of recycled cardboard or a hand permanently disfigured by a dough roller at a pizza restaurant represent accidents which are preventable.
The causes for injury are due to unsafe equipment and lack of adequate safety training and supervision. Stressful conditions and work requiring speed can also contribute to accidents.
According to a University of North Carolina (UNC), a
Chapel Hill
study published in March 2007, many teenagers use dangerous equipment or work long hours during the school week. The results show 52 percent of males and 43 percent of females use dangerous equipment (such as box crushers and slicers) despite child labour laws prohibiting these practices.
Additionally, 84 percent of females and 61 percent of males handle cash in their jobs, exposing them to risks associated with robberies. Homicides during robberies were the cause of up to one half of all youth fatalities in the retail trade. About one third of the teens surveyed said they had not received any safety training, and others who were trained did not receive instruction in some critical areas, such as what to do in case of a robbery.
“Greater supervision and training in difficult situations that arise in retail and service sector jobs would really benefit these teens,” said lead study author
Carol Runyan
, Ph.D., director of UNC’s Injury Prevention Research Center (IPRC) and professor of health behavior and health education in the UNC School of Public Health. “We need to remember that workers need to be trained to deal with such situations. The fact that so many teens in our survey reported working one or more days a week without any adult supervision, suggests the potential for serious lapses in safety.”
In
Canada
, the Labour Code and Regulations vary from province to province with specifications for different age groups and restrictions for particular jobs, (e.g. minors are not permitted to do underground work in mines, work with dangerous materials such as explosives or sell/serve alcoholic beverages). Furthermore, teens under the age of 17 may not work between
11 p.m.
and
6 a.m.
. Runyan suggests the need for better enforcement of child labour laws. Some teens said they worked after
11 p.m.
on school nights, potentially interfering with school or sleep. Runyan goes on to say “Though there are benefits to work, not enough attention has been paid to safety…the data we collected suggests there are gaps in how well businesses are complying”.
Runyan suggests that parents need to be aware of the work their children are doing and get involved in helping to ensure that businesses provide a safe work environment. She also called on physicians working with adolescents to be more aware and ask teens about work as part of standard medical practice.
Teens are eager to work and we have to ensure that they accept job opportunities that offer safe environments and proper training.
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