Between 2014 and 2022, complaints about working conditions for minors doubled – and one expert believes this could only be the tip of the iceberg.
By Lizz Giordano / CascadePBS.org / Aug 8, 2024
Jasmine Brennan started her first job a few months after he turned 16. Like most working high school students, Brennan found a position in food service, taking orders behind the counter at a Jack in the Box in Ferndale.
Brennan said her boss, rarely around, never provided formal training. Instead, he relied on a friend for training.
“I was very lost. I have no idea. But it was fun, because obviously I’m a kid and I was having fun not really working, but working,” Brennan told Cascade PBS.
Brennan’s boss then began scheduling her for late shifts the night before she had class or asking her to work during school hours, all of which were later ruled violations of the state’s youth employment laws. For Brennan, closing the restaurant at the end of a night wasn’t hard, but the late hours meant less sleep if she had to be at school by 7:45 the next day.
“When I had to be there later than 12:30, I was upset or annoyed,” she said. “I have things to do tomorrow. I’ll have to open tomorrow, or I’ll have to go to school.”
“They were constantly making them work late on Sundays, which would fall into the early morning,” added her mother Lindsey Brennan, “which then probably messed with school a little bit — you’re exhausted.”
As youth employment has grown in Washington over the past decade, so have the number of citations for violating youth labor laws. Teenagers are overworked or kept up too late on school nights. Some are asked to do dangerous or prohibited tasks. According to the Washington Department of Labor and Industries, the state agency that oversees working conditions, 750 workers under 18 reported workplace injuries in the state last year.
Many of these young workers serve food from behind a counter or scan items on a checkout lane. Some pick fruits and vegetables in the fields. Most are eager to please or don’t want to draw attention to their lack of experience.
Brennan said she would text her boss when she was scheduled at hours that weren’t allowed.
Nothing changed so he finally filed a complaint with L&I. During the three-month investigation period, the agency found that this Jack in the Box in the northwest corner of the state violated youth labor laws 149 times for minors working too many hours in a day, too late on a school night and without adult supervision.
Brennan only knew the company violated labor laws because her father, who worked in construction, knew L&I.
After five months, Brennan’s parents forced her to quit. Her father had spent hours watching from the parking lot during a late shift as Brennan and another 16-year-old friend served the last customers and closed the store without any adult supervision, as required by law.
The Jack in the Box in Ferndale, Washington on August 1, 2024. (Lizz Giordano/Cascade PBS)
“[Her boss] they had no idea what they were allowed to do or not do,” Lindsey Brennan said. “If she hadn’t broken free from us, she probably would have continued to be abused.”
The growing workforce
Youth employment in Washington has grown 46 percent among 16-19 year olds over the past decade. The latest figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that 137,000 young people, about one-third of all Washington residents in that age group, were employed in 2023.
Reid Maki, Director of Child Labor Issues and Coordinator of Child Labor Coalitionsaid the tight labor market likely incentivizes businesses to hire minors.
“Teenagers are more likely to work for a little less money,” Maki noted.
State laws govern how many hours 14-17-year-olds can work when school is in session, how late they can work on a school night, and what jobs and tasks are prohibited – for example, excavating construction sites, covering or operating a chainsaw meat. (In agricultural jobs, children as young as 12 can harvest vegetables and fruits when school is not in session.)
Youth workers are more vulnerable than adults, Maki said. They often aim to please and, due to brain development, have a limited ability to assess risk.
“Just because of their life experience, they just don’t have a clue of what could go wrong,” he added.
L&I records show that the number of complaints the agency investigates each year doubled between 2014 and 2022, as did the number of citations issued each year during that period.
“Because we’re a complaints-based process, it might be fair to say there are more people watching,” L&I spokesman Matthew Elrich said. “That could be why we’re getting more complaints that lead to investigations.”
A Cascade PBS analysis of L&I data from 2014 to 2022 found that almost all child labor complaints to L&I resulted in a citation. In 2022, L&I conducted investigations in 122 complaints, issuing citations — many for multiple violations — in 119 of those cases. Most violations also came with a monetary fine.
Maki said the high rate of investigations resulting in citations suggests that many unrecognized violations may go unreported.
“The number of violations we’re seeing, which are alarming — but they’re just a tip,” Maki said. “I think there’s a lot of violations going on there.”
More than a third of the violations involved minors working too many hours, too late on a school night or when they should be in school, the data show. The second largest category of violations, 17 percent, resulted from workers missing meals or rest breaks. Violations for performing prohibitive tasks ranked fourth on the list of most frequent violations.https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/fwRZa/1/
In the past decade, the largest L&I citation for violating youth labor laws has been to a Jack in the Box. The $69,500 fine issued in 2020 was one of at least 18 monetary penalties — totaling nearly $200,000 — issued to Jack in the Box franchises during that time.
L&I fined Brennan’s store in Ferndale $12,450 after the agency cited the 146 company time for working four minors during school hours 48 times, working with six minors more than allowed in a school day 39 times, and working three minors after 8:00 PM without adult supervision .
Multiple phone, email and text messages sent to the Pars Group, which operates Jack in the Box locations in the state, including the one in Ferndale, were not returned.
Nearly half of all youth work citations issued by the state over the past decade have been to the food service industry, according to L&I data. Workers in this sector also file the most claims among minors.
L&I research from the early 1990s found that young workers were almost twice as likely to be injured on the job as their older counterparts. Using census data and adjusting for hours worked, the researchers calculated that the injury rate for 16- and 17-year-olds is 19.4 per 100 workers, compared with 10.6 per 100 for adults.
Twice as likely to be injured
In 2019, one minor died from an injury sustained at a construction site, according to L&I workers’ compensation data. Last year, a 16-year-old boy lost both his legs while operating a car on the juvenile ban list. L&I reported that in 2023, child workers also suffered 245 fractures, 225 concussions and numerous cuts or sprains.
Matt Pomerinke said he was working his first job out of high school at a paper mill when he was hit by a car, losing much of his right arm at 21.
“Bad luck. That was our entire safety program,” Pomerinke said two decades later, addressing an auditorium filled mostly with teenage boys wearing hoodies and baseball caps.
Pomerinke spoke at the New Market Skills Center in Tumwater as part of the L&I Young Injured Workers Speaker Programa workplace safety awareness campaign that runs in the weeks leading up to the end of the school year.
Soon at the mill, Pomerinke saw colleague after colleague injured – a broken finger and wrist, pulled muscles, a broken rotary bucket.
He received very little training in his first job, he told the crowd. He took a 10-minute tour of the sawmill, followed by five minutes on how to take planks of wood off a conveyor belt and stack them, he recalled.
“No one ever taught you anything there. Nobody showed you anything,” Pomerinke said. “There was no one there to ask. Not that I would probably have my career at that point. I just wanted to do it all myself.”
One night, when a stick got caught in his sawdust conveyor, Pomerinke reached out to dislodge it, which he had done a hundred times.
“After two years, my luck ran out,” he said. “I was hurt the worst ever.”
It took 45 minutes for emergency personnel to get him out of the car.
Before the school bell rang, Pomerinke shared her breakup advice.
“Don’t take a shortcut. … It’s not worth it,” he said. “Do all the training you can and take it seriously.”
And learn your rights and responsibilities as a worker.
“Things employers can and can’t ask you to do,” he said, before gesturing to his missing forearm and right hand. “Things I never knew about it eventually led to this.”
FEATURED IMAGE: Former Jack in the Box employee Jasmine Brennan at one of the franchise’s Washington locations. (Lizz Giordano/Cascade PBS)
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