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But one Saturday morning Adam was driving a golf cart when he lost control and the vehicle slammed into a wooden deck, plowing underneath it. Adam was pinned between the cart and the deck, and cried out for help before losing consciousness. A doctor on the scene failed to revive him, and the boy was pronounced dead at a local hospital.
Tragic accidents will occur, of course, but this one never should have happened. Adam's grief-stricken mother discovered that, by state law, he wasn't allowed behind the wheel of a cart. Anyone under 18 was barred from driving them -- a law the club's general manager did not seem aware of when he spoke to a local newspaper. The club's punishment: a mere $1,000 fine for not reporting the accident quickly enough to the federal government.
If only Adam's story were unique. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, 41 young workers were killed on the job in 2002, or about one every nine days. That's sobering news at a time when up to a million teenagers are settling into summer jobs. In fact, at least five kids died last summer alone -- some in horrific ways, such as a 16-year-old camp counselor near Tillamook, Oregon, who was killed while firing a ceremonial cannon, and a 17-year-old in Wood Dale, Illinois, who was crushed between a semi-trailer and a freight dock. Workers under 18 are also injured at a much higher rate than adults, leading to nearly 60,000 ER visits in 2001.
Certain jobs are especially dangerous for kids, with farm work topping the list. They're particularly hazardous when employers are lax with rules and oversight -- or, as in Adam Carey's case, fail to follow the law. In other words, a lot of accidents could be prevented if employers looked after the safety of their youngest workers.
Everybody knows it's nuts to throw kids with little or no training into workplaces with dangerous machinery or hazardous conditions; in fact, federal child labor laws forbid kids under 18 from taking jobs in places like coal mines or sawmills, or handling such things as power-driven metal shears and woodworking machines.
But not everyone is paying attention to the legalities, or to common sense. Employers regularly ask teens to operate forklifts and buzz saws or use meat slicers and deep fryers.
"When kids turn 16, we don't hand over the car keys to them and say, 'Okay, go figure out how to do this on your own,' " says Darlene Adkins of the National Consumers League.
In 2000, a 16-year-old in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, was working at a construction site without wearing a safety harness and plunged 27 feet to his death. Two years ago, a 14-year-old boy in Sandusky County, Ohio, was killed when he fell into a cattle feed grinder -- a machine he was too young to operate. And just last summer, teens in College Park, Georgia, and Marshfield, Massachusetts, were crushed by forklifts they were operating at an illegal age.
Then there are the thousands of teens who are burned each year by grease and steam in fast food restaurants, or cut by knives and meat slicers in grocery stores. Think a convenience store job sounds safe? Teenagers left working alone at night are vulnerable to holdups, like a 16-year-old pizzeria worker in Michigan who was shot in the head four years ago.
In fact, according to the Department of Labor, there were 87 fatalities among youths in the restaurant and retail industries between 1992 and 1997, nearly two-thirds of which were homicides.
There are no sure ways to safeguard all of our kids, but here's the essential one: The courts need to punish every employer who endangers the lives of teen workers. And right now, that certainly isn't happening. According to a New York Times investigation, nearly 2,200 workers of all ages died between 1982 and 2002 due to what investigators called "willful violations" by the employer. Yet fewer than ten percent of those cases were ever prosecuted. There's no evidence that youth fatalities, a portion of those 2,200 deaths, are prosecuted any more aggressively.
Meanwhile, employers who are punished usually get little more than a slap on the wrist. Jail time is rare, and fines are typically modest. The case of the Alabama boy who died at the construction site? Tays Framing Inc., a subcontractor for the job, was fined $10,000 by the Labor Department. The teen killed by a forklift in Georgia? The Kaylex Company was fined $15,900.
Given such mild risks, it's no wonder The New York Times found that at least 70 employers known to have violated safety laws continued to flout them. Since her son's death, Maggie Carey has become a fervent workplace-safety activist. She was stunned to discover that her family was entitled only to a small payment from workers compensation for Adam's death; by law, she cannot sue the country club (although she says the family has filed suits against the golf cart manufacturer as well as the club's board of governors).
Like many parents, Carey believed her child was safe at work. "I just assumed that employers obey the rules with kids." With the summer months here, and teens heading off to their jobs, it's time the rest of us wised up too.
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