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Shop Talk: Child labor crackdown under way
Sunday, April 30, 2000 By Jim McKay, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Federal wage-and-hour inspectors tomorrow begin a three-month campaign to enforce child labor laws through "wall-to-wall" audits of 110 randomly selected businesses in Western Pennsylvania.
Targeted industries include restaurants, grocery and convenience stores, construction companies, amusement parks and other recreational enterprises that employ teen-agers.
Richard Clougherty, Pittsburgh district director of the U.S. Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division, said employers found to violate child labor regulations could face financial penalties.
The child labor initiative is an annual affair. Last year, agents in Clougherty's office investigated 114 firms and found child labor violations at 41 of them, or 36 percent. Penalties totaling $114,000 were issued.
"That is, quite frankly, breathtaking," Clougherty said.
Many of the violations involved teen-agers working prohibited hours or operating restricted equipment such as meat slicers, power saws or even golf carts.
Federal law allows 14- and 15-year-olds to be employed in nonhazardous jobs with certain restrictions. They may work no more than three hours a day on school days, eight hours on nonschool days, and no more than 40 hours a week in nonschool weeks.
Minors may not drive a motor vehicle or use power-driven tools in woodworking, baking, sawing, meat slicing, paper products, metal forming or hoisting processes.
There is no limit on the hours that 16- and 17-year-olds may work in a nonhazardous job. People 18 or older may perform any job, whether hazardous or not, for unlimited hours as long as the minimum wage and overtime requirements are met.
A summary of child labor restrictions and other requirements of the Fair Labor Standards Act can be found at www.dol.gov/elaws/flsa/htman Internet site published by the U.S. Department of Labor.
No earrings
A month after Frank Kleinsorge was hired as an optometrist at a Pennsylvania eyewear distributor, the store owner asked him to stop wearing an earring. Kleinsorge refused and was terminated.
He sued the employer, Eyeland Corp., in federal court, alleging gender discrimination under title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 because males, and not females, were barred from wearing earrings at work.
Kleinsorge's case was dismissed by a Pennsylvania court, which agreed with other courts in deciding that employers are entitled to establish policies that treat men and women differently based on customary ways of grooming.
Grooming requirements pass legal muster if they are enforced evenhandedly among men and women. The court found against Kleinsorge because he did not contend that other male employees were permitted to wear earings or that female grooming standards were enforced less stringently than those for men.
Wabtec worker aid
Gov. Ridge last week promised job-search and other assistance to workers who are expected to be laid off this summer from the Motor Coils manufacturing facility in Braddock.
At least 264 hourly workers at Motor Coils, a unit of Wabtec, may lose their jobs as a result of the company's tentative decision to move the remanufacture of locomotive armatures and motors to Mexico.
The company has issued plant-closing notices to the workers and their representative, the International Union of Electrical Workers.
Other stuff ...
The state will put $5 million in federal welfare funds into programs that help furnish summer employment for low-income youths. The money will go to Pennsylvania's 22 local Workforce Investment Boards, which help workers, job-seekers and students obtain skills they need to get jobs ... Quality Building Services Inc., a cleaning contractor targeted by a janitors' union, has settled a National Labor Relations Board complaint by agreeing to post notice of employee rights to organize. The agreement arose from allegations that company supervisors threatened to fire employees who work as janitors at a Bell Atlantic Corp. facility Downtown for considering union representation. The charge was initiated by Service Employees International Union, Local 585, Division 29 ... An Ohio plant that makes television picture tubes for Philips Electronics plans to lay off 1,500 workers, or 80 percent of its work force, beginning next year and move most of the work to Mexico. Philips, the world's largest maker of picture tubes, said it was transferring the work from Ottawa, Ohio, to cut costs. The plant makes 4.2 million picture tubes each year for TVs assembled by Philips and other makers.
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