Safety No Small Matter for Teen Workers

This week, nearly 10,000 youth will head out to summer jobs across the state, with funding and support from the federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and the state’s subsidized jobs program administered through local Workforce Investment Boards (WIBs) and the Commonwealth Corporation. 

But rather than crossing fingers and hoping the teens will be safe, the agencies recruited MassCOSH and their teen peer leaders to provide critical safety training to job placement staff. These staff will, in turn, educate youth and employers.

“It’s critical for teens and adults who work with teens to understand potential hazards on the job,” said Commonwealth Corporation’s Anne Berrigan, Program Manager for YouthWorks, the state’s youth summer jobs program.  “Training in workplace safety and health can help prevent accidents and promote behaviors that keep young people safe and empowered in their summer jobs.”

Safety is no small matter for teens, who are exposed to a host of hazards on the job: hot grease at fast food restaurants; needlesticks in public works jobs; and heavy lifting in nursing homes, to name a few.   According to the Mass. Department of Public Health, each year approx. 1000 teens seek care from emergency departments for job-related accidents. 

“There are a lot of employers who don’t have a clue about what teens can and can’t do [under the Child Labor Laws] and that’s why some youth get injured,” said Ana Sanchez, a youth advocate from FutureWorks who attended the training. “It’s important for the youth to know about their rights because they’re afraid if they say something they might lose their job. And sometimes they really do lose their job for speaking up. I’ll be including the health and safety information I learned into my curriculum so that our youth have this information.”

At trainings in Quincy, Worcester and Springfield - conducted jointly with Western MassCOSH – staff from WIBs and area community groups mapped out hazards in workplaces that typically employ youth, brushed up on the state’s Child Labor Laws and learned training techniques that keep teens engaged. MassCOSH used a well-tested curricula developed by University of California at Berkeley, along with resources developed by the Mass. Department of Public Health.   

“Employers and youth coordinators need to know how important it is for teens to know about their rights under the Child Labor and other health and safety laws,” said Soraya Jean Baptiste, a MassCOSH senior peer leader who led one of the trainings.   “No job is worth harming the quality of life for a teen.”