Children in the Workplace - Nuisance or Real Risk?

We encounter children in the workplace because of two reasons – firstly, because the parent of that child has no choice but to take them to their place of work, or when children are actually employed by an organization.

Children Accompanying their Parents to Work

This situation usually arises during December – schools or crèches close early in that month for the holidays, and there are often no holiday care facilities available for those children.

Parents who are unable to take leave during this time may have no alternative but to bring their children to work with them, and employers who are usually unaware of their legal duties to these children may give permission for this to take place.

In terms of the Occupational Health and Safety Act 85 of 1993 (hereinafter referred to as “the Act”), employers have a legal duty in terms of Section 9 to ensure that persons other than those in their employ who may be affected by the activities of the organization, are not exposed to hazards to their health and safety.The Act contains specific regulations which govern this situation, namely the “Health and Safety of Children at Work Regulations”. These regulations prescribe additional duties for employers in respect of their child workers, over and above all of the other health, safety and labour laws which are of general application to all employees.

Therefore, employers will be ultimately responsible for any harm children may suffer on their premises, and children will also need to be put through some form of an induction process and not wander around the premises unaccompanied.

Employers could face fines or even imprisonment should they not comply with the provisions of the Act, so it would be advisable that the legal implications of having child “visitors” at the workplace are carefully considered and implemented before simply allowing this situation to arise.

Child Workers

In terms of the Age of Majority Act, children are now considered adults when they turn eighteen years old, and no longer twenty one as was always the case. Children may seek employment from the age of fifteen, which means that there could be child workers in the workplace between the ages of fifteen and seventeen years old.

The Act contains specific regulations which govern this situation, namely the “Health and Safety of Children at Work Regulations”. These regulations prescribe additional duties for employers in respect of their child workers, over and above all of the other health, safety and labour laws which are of general application to all employees.

The purpose of these regulations is to prohibit or place conditions upon the work that may be required or permitted to be performed by child workers, and which is not prohibited by any other law. A few examples extracted from the aforesaid regulations, are as follows:

• No employer may require any child worker to undertake any work which may attract respiratory hazards which would require the use of respiratory protection equipment;
• No child worker may perform any work at a height of more than two meters from the ground, unless he is supervised by a competent adult employee;
• A child may not lift any object which weighs more than the lesser of 15kgs, or 20% of the child’s body weight;
• Child workers may not be exposed to noise levels in excess of 80dB(A) unless he is provided with the correct hearing protection equipment (the ordinary exposure level for adults in a workplace is 85dB(A)).

Further, these regulations state that when an employer develops a safe work procedure (SWPs) for child workers, he needs to ensure that they are adequately supervised by competent adult employees. In addition to this, SWPs must take adolescent characteristics into account and ensure that only age appropriate tasks are assigned to the child workers.

There are also more stringent express provisions regarding the training of child workers in respect of health and safety related issues.

Children in the Workplace

As indicated above, employers can face serious penalties for failure to comply with any of these regulations. It is therefore a fair deduction that children in the workplace – either as visitors or employees – pose serious additional legal risks to employers.

Employers will need to decide whether they are prepared to expose themselves to this possible peril, or whether they should prohibit children from the workplace entirely in order to attempt to manage this risk effectively.

Article by Natalie Graaff via SheqAfrica.com