As teen employment rises in WA, so do youth labor violations

In the past decade, the largest single L&I citation for violating youth labor laws went to a Jack in the Box. The $69,500 fine issued in 2020 was one of at least 18 monetary penalties – totaling nearly $200,000 – issued to Jack in the Box franchises in that time period. 

L&I issued Brennan’s store in Ferndale a $12,450 fine after the agency cited the company 146 times for working four minors during school hours 48 times, working six minors more hours than allowed on a school day 39 times and working three minors past 8 p.m. without adult supervision. 

Multiple phone, email and text messages sent to the Pars Group, which operates Jack in the Box locations in the state including the one in Ferndale, were not returned. 

Find tools and resources in Cascade PBS’s Check Your Work guide to search workplace safety records and complaints for businesses in your community.

Nearly half of all youth labor citations issued by the state over the past decade went to the food service industry, according to L&I data. Workers in that sector also file the most compensation claims among minors. 

L&I research from the early 1990s found young workers are nearly twice as likely to get hurt on the job than their older counterparts. Using census data and adjusting for the number of hours worked, researchers calculated the injury rate for 16- and 17-year-olds to be 19.4 per 100 employees, compared with 10.6 per 100 for adults.  

Twice as likely to get hurt

In 2019, a minor died due to an injury sustained at a worksite, according to L&I worker’s compensation data. Last year, a 16-year-old lost both legs operating a machine on the do-not-use list for minors. L&I reported that in 2023, underage workers also suffered 245 fractures, 225 concussions and numerous cuts or sprains. 

Matt Pomerinke said he was working his first job out of high school at a papermill when he got pulled into a machine, losing much of his right arm at 21. 

“Dumb luck. That was our entire safety program,” Pomerinke said two decades later, addressing an auditorium filled mostly with teenage boys wearing hoodies and baseball caps.

Pomerinke was speaking at the New Market Skills Center in Tumwater as part of L&I’s Injured Young Workers Speakers Program, a workplace safety awareness campaign running in the weeks before the school year ended.

In just a short time at the mill, Pomerinke watched co-worker after co-worker get hurt – a broken finger and a wrist, pulled muscles, a torn rotator cup. 

He received very little training at his first job, he told the crowd. He got a 10-minute tour of the sawmill followed by five minutes on how to pull wooden boards off a conveyor belt and stack them, he recalled.

“Nobody ever taught you anything there. Nobody showed you anything,” Pomerinke said. “There was nobody there to ask. Not that I probably would have at that point my career. I just wanted to do everything myself.”

One night, when a stick got caught in his sawdust conveyor, Pomerinke reached in to dislodge it, something he had done a hundred times.

“After two years, my luck ran out,” he said. “I got hurt the worst out of everybody.”

It took 45 minutes for emergency responders to extract him from the machine.

Before the school bell rang, Pomerinke shared his parting advice. 

“Don’t take a shortcut. … It’s not worth it,” he said. “Get all the training you can and take it seriously.”

And learn your rights and responsibilities as a worker. 

“Things that employers can and cannot ask you to do,” he said, before gesturing toward his missing right forearm and hand. “Things I never knew about that ultimately led to this.”