Note: This Employer’s Advocate column was originally published in the Amarillo Globe-News on Sunday, October 12, 2008.

This newspaper reported last month that the owner and the managers of the nation’s largest kosher meat-packing plant (Agriprocessors in Postville, Iowa) were criminally charged with more than 9000 individual counts apiece for employing children younger than 16 to handle dangerous equipment such as power saws and meat grinders. The children were also exposed to hazardous chemicals, according to the charges.

To assure that your business and you personally never get into that kind of criminal trouble, you have to educate yourself on the child labor laws.

A common trap that employers fall into with workers under 18 is to allow them to frequently drive on the job. No employee under 17 may drive a motor vehicle on public roads as part of his job. That means that you can’t use a 16-year-old to even run to the office supply store.

If your employee is 17, she can drive on the job only during daylight hours, only if she has completed a state approved driver’s education course and has no moving violations on her record at the time of hire, always wears a seatbelt and only if she spends no more than 20 percent of her time during any one workweek driving on company business.

There are other traps in the child labor laws, such as restrictions on allowing teens to work in fast-food restaurants near the meat slicers. Also, some states have even stricter laws than the federal law outlined here.

So here are the general child labor laws that you must follow: Continue reading Employer Faces Child Labor Criminal Charges →