In Open Court

A new study examining the safety of young workers in the United States has yielded startling findings, says Massachusetts personal injury attorney Mark E. Salomone . According to statistics that appeared in HealthDay News, researchers from the Colorado School of Public Health found that approximately 20,000 teen job-related injuries occurred in 2010, including 88 teen deaths due to workplace injuries at privately owned companies. Most businesses with three or more employees carry Worker’s Compensation coverage, which applies to young employees as well as adults.
Teen worker injuries and fatalities can be the due to a number of factors, including dangerous work environments, defective work equipment or poor training. Teenager job injuries have many causes, from construction site accidents and company car accidents to repetitive stress carpal tunnel pain and restaurant worker kitchen burns .
The study found that, out of all the types of work young people are hired to do, farming is the most hazardous. “From a fatality standpoint, farm work is the most dangerous occupation for kids,” said study author Carol Runyan in an University of Colorado news release. “In farm work, youths are working around heavy equipment, digging and cutting with sharp implements. There are deaths almost every year from young people suffocating in grain bins.”
Massachusetts personal injury attorney Mark E. Salomone understands that young workers are typically more vulnerable than adults, across all industries, and that it is vital for teen employees and their families to explore not only Workers’ Compensation rights but other damages they may be able to recover. “Even if your family receives the maximum amount of teen Workers’ compensation benefits,” says Salomone, “it may not be enough to cover all the expenses incurred as a result of your child’s injury. A third party-such as a manufacturer, contractor or someone else whose actions may have been careless-could also be liable for a young worker’s injuries.”
Child labor laws exist across the nation, though in some companies they are not fully implemented or may go unheeded altogether. “We don’t tend to think of child labor as a major issue in the U.S., but we should,” says Runyan. “Laws governing the employment of youth ages 14 to 17 in this country are often very lenient and, in the case of family farms, virtually non-existent.”

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