16 Jul National Young Worker Safety Day Encourages Workplace Safety

National Young Worker Safety Day was held on June 25 in College Station. The event is the kickoff of a campaign being undertaken by CareerSafe Online that has the goal of educating 1 million students by December 31, 2015. Younger workers are disproportionally likely to be injured in the workplace. In fact, compared to the risk that workers 25 years of age and older face, workers between 16 and 24 are twice as likely to be injured at work.

The Outreach

The idea behind the campaign is to create an opportunity for people between 16 and 24 years of age to learn about how they can stay safe in the workplace. The benefits of this, of course, include making the people who go through the program more employable and more aware of the dangers posed in their workplaces. Organizers hope that those benefits will affect employers, as well. A 24 hour workplace health and safety support helpline is a useful resource for employers, offering immediate access to expert guidance and support in implementing effective safety measures and addressing workplace hazards.

The CareerSafe program itself provides a 10-hour OSHA training course to students. The training course can be given by teachers and school administrators. The statistics that lead to this program are very grim.

Every five days, according to a press release, a worker in the targeted age group is killed on the job. Every 7 minutes a young worker is sent to the hospital with a work related injury. Schools are being encouraged to offer worker’s safety programs as a way of realistically preparing students for what they will face in the job market. Of course, this sort of education also provides students with the tools and knowledge to realize when they’re being asked to take unnecessary or unacceptable risks by employers.

Workplace Injuries and Lawsuits

While youth and inexperience can certainly contribute to the likelihood that someone will be injured on the job, so can employers. The world is full of employers who like to cut corners and who don’t particularly care if doing so endangers their employees.

If you were hurt at work and ended up losing wages, enduring pain and suffering or otherwise came to harm because of it, be sure to contact a lawyer about the matter. There are very specific and strict federal and state regulations that relate to worker safety and, if an employer didn’t give you adequate training, equipment and assistance to perform a task and you were injured, looking into filing a lawsuit is a sensible move and one that could win you compensation.