Making an Impact on Safety and Health Training for Young Workers

One of the rites of passage for young people in their teens is getting a job. Teens look forward to earning a paycheck and learning responsibility through work. It is an important part of becoming an adult.

Tragically, too many of these young workers get hurt on the job and too many of those who get hurt die from their injuries. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ National Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries in 2022, 96 young workers—under the age of 20—died as the result of work-related injuries in 2022. And 2022 is not an outlier year; an average of 92 of these young workers have died every year since 2018.

The Dennis Technical Education Center of the Boise School District in Idaho and the Boise Area Office of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration are taking steps to reverse this trend. Both parties renewed an alliance agreement that “aims to reduce and prevent worker exposure to occupational hazards, address youth employment issues related to safety and health, and educate students on the rights of workers and the responsibilities of employers under the Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) Act.” The alliance was established in January 2020 and was renewed in 2022 and again on January 17, 2024.

“Schools want students to have training in hazard awareness. This alliance does this for the students of the Boise high schools,” said Adam Gerson, compliance assistance specialist in the OSHA Boise area office.

According to the agreement, DTEC and OSHA will work together to improve training and education for the students and faculty of the education center. This will be done by providing the OSHA 10-hour courses in construction and general industry. OSHA will work with authorized trainers in Idaho and representatives from the Pacific Northwest OSHA Education Center at the University of Washington to develop the OSHA 10-hour courses for DTEC.

DTEC provides career and technical education training for students of the Kuna School District, Bishop Kelly High School, home-schooled students, and online school students. Since the alliance was formed in 2020, more than 250 DTEC students have received this training. The current agreement states that a population of 900 students are eligible to receive training each year.

“We want all students and young workers of our community to know how to be safe from the very beginning of their working days,” said David Kearns, area director of the OSHA Boise area office. “In addition to making them aware of safety hazards in the workplace, this program also makes them more employable when they look for jobs and they already have the OSHA 10-hour card.”

In addition to the training on workplace hazards and safety measures, the curriculum includes training from representatives from the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division about what they are legally allowed to do in workplaces as young workers.

“Too many young people enter the workforce not knowing what work their employers can legally assign them to do. There are laws in place to protect young workers but too often those workers do not know those laws or what their rights are,” said Gerson. “This program changes that.”

Part of the power of this alliance is that the work being done behind it can be done in schools and school districts across the country.

“This is a real opportunity for creative thinking. It can be a model for other similar career training programs for young people,” said Hana Patterson, OSHA regional compliance assistance specialist. “It is opening up new opportunities to conduct training in areas that matter.”

OSHA provides free information about workplace safety for young workers, employers, as well as parents and educators. Visit www.osha.gov/young-workers to learn more. Visit www.osha.gov/young-workers-construction for information about safe work conditions for young workers in construction.