‘Beyond failure’: WA teen loses legs at school-based work program

Variance standards

Like a typical teen in their last year of high school, Derrik is rarely home. He spends most evenings out with his friends. Derrik said he applied for a job at Rotschy because friends and his older brother worked there. 

“I enjoy working in the field, working with the guys, working with my hands,” he said. “It was fun. I really enjoyed it. I still do enjoy it.”

Debbie Berkowitz, a worker safety policy expert and advocate, said pre-apprenticeship programs like this work-based learning program should not be allowed in jobs with high injury and death rates, like construction or roofing. 

“You need a certain degree of maturity to understand the dangers of the jobs. You also need a certain maturity to be able to say to a boss, ‘This is not safe and I cannot do this,’” Berkowitz said. “There’s no reason these companies can’t just try and bring on someone who’s 18.”

Companies ultimately hire minors because they want to pay them less, she argued: “It’s really about corporate greed. Why can’t they wait till they’re 18?”

There are no established requirements a company must meet to hire minors or participate in the work-based learning program, according to L&I. When applying for variances, companies just need to explain how a student would benefit from being able to work longer hours or use prohibitive machines. 

Officials said a company’s history of labor and safety violations is not typically considered when they apply for a minor work permit, nor when companies apply for a variance or schools screen a company’s worksites for hazards before a student is placed. L&I is working to change that, according to agency officials. 

Companies that want to hire workers under 18 have to first obtain a minor work permit, approval of which is automatic once paperwork is submitted, and have families sign a parent authorization form.

This then qualifies them to hire students in a work-based school program and receive a variance, as long as a company does not list tools that are always prohibited for those under age on its application. School districts determine what companies and students participate in work-based learning programs, according to OSPI documents. 

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

Miller, the former L&I youth specialist, said it makes sense to have a process that involves checking a company’s history of injuries, child labor violations and health and safety citations before authorizing variances. 

“This is a school-sanctioned activity. A variety of things need to be happening to check whether this is an appropriate place for a kid,” Miller said. “One could also argue that minor work permits are being provided to employers who really have no business hiring kids.”

L&I did revoke Rotschy’s student learner variance a few weeks after Derrik’s injury, and the company has not received one since. Rotschy never lost its minor work permit, which allows the company to hire students through a school’s work-based learning programs. 

In the past few months, L&I started working on creating a set of standards for companies that want to receive student variances for prohibited work or longer hours. 

“The way that the statute was written, it left so much wiggle room for approval and denial that really it would be almost impossible, without internal guidance, to maintain consistency of application of those statutes,” Templeton said. 

L&I indicated the new internal guidance will include examining a company’s history of workers’ compensation claims, minor injuries, safety citations and labor violations. Those standards could go into effect by mid-December. 

Suzanne Dover, a child labor specialist who conducted the 2024 youth labor investigation into Rotschy, said school districts bear some responsibility for keeping kids safe at work-based learning sites, but ultimately it is the employer’s duty to keep their workers safe on the job.

“We can’t go to every site, because we don’t just have the people to do that,” Dover said of L&I. “But OSPI does, and because the schools do that oversight role.”