‘Safe Jobs for Youth’ targets teens 14 to 18

As thousands of high school students and teens turn their attention to summer jobs next month, state officials and local leaders are teaming up in a campaign to enhance workplace safety for California’s youngest workers.

Thousands of teens enter the workforce each summer looking to earn money and valuable job experience. Unfortunately, some of these jobs involve hazards that lead to injury and disability.

According to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, more than 200,000 young workers are injured on the job each year, with a young worker injured every 40 seconds. Of those, 70,000 are injured seriously enough to require a trip to the emergency room.

Targeting teens between the ages of 14 and 18 and their parents are the outreach efforts of the state’s "Safe Jobs for Youth" month. UCLA’s Labor Occupational Safety and Health (LOSH) and Center for Occupational Health (COEH) have initiated a program to educate youth about their workplace rights, job safety and how to avoid hazardous working conditions.

"By drawing the attention of students and their parents to ‘Safe Jobs for Youth’ month, UCLA’s COEH and LOSH hope to raise everyone’s awareness of workplace hazards," said John Froines, PhD, UCLA’s director at the Center for Occupational Health. "Accidents happen," he said, "but workplace injuries can often be avoided by alert workers who know how to identify dangers and bring them to the attention of coworkers and management."

A highlight of the month is a Lewis Hine photography exhibit at Los Angeles City Hall. "Let children be children crusade against child labor," were the words that highlighted the artist’s body of work. It included hundreds of photos documenting the harsh working conditions of child laborers who were employed in sweatshops, mining, agriculture, canning and manufacturing during the early 1900s. The exhibit will run through June 25. The photographs helped lead to landmark federal child labor legislation that was signed into law by then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

For more information, visit Websites www.losh.ucla.edu or www.youngworkers.org.