Table of Contents
Working as a State Team
The State teams, assisted by the NYWRC, work at three levels: State, community,
and regional.
Working at the State Level
Each team worked to organize systems and take action to improve young worker
safety in the State as a whole. The first step in this process was to recruit
additional members. Most teams started with one or two members who called their
counterparts in other agencies and organizations for an initial meeting. The
teams expanded through personal contacts and by recognizing the agencies and
organizations in each State that were critical to the team’s mission.
This provided each team with more resources and access to those systems and
audiences essential to young worker safety.
A variety of organizations and agencies can make unique contributions to the
work of the team:
- The State department of labor can provide knowledge about
child labor laws, health and safety laws, data on injuries and labor
law violations, and funding.
- The State department of education can contribute access
to school personnel and students, educational expertise, and a perspective
on integrating young worker safety activities into school programs.
- The State
department of health can offer access to health care providers, experience
with health education and adolescent health, data on work injuries, and
information about medical care for these injuries.
- Committees on Occupational Safety and
Health (COSH) can work with other labor organizations and provide expertise
on occupational health and safety.
- National Safety Council chapters can provide
access to employers as well as funds and other resources.
- Employers, job trainers,
and others who work directly with young people can provide important
expertise as well as access to work sites in which young worker safety training
can take place.
In each State, a lead agency or organization volunteered to coordinate the
team’s efforts. The teams quickly discovered that having manageable tasks
and objectives was important to the teams’ progress. Dividing tasks into
manageable parts (for example, looking at data, recruiting new members, providing
training and presentations, and scheduling and facilitating meetings) and assigning
each to a different member allowed the team to make progress without unduly
burdening any one member or agency.
Teams also discovered that starting with a project that provides an immediate
sense of accomplishment is important. Small projects with a concrete product
provide the momentum and enthusiasm teams need to persevere and work toward
more ambitious goals. These projects included producing brochures on teen worker
safety for health care providers and presenting information about young worker
safety at meetings of employers, educators, and other professional associations.
| Who Should be Represented
on a State Team? |
Agencies, organizations, and disciplines represented
on State teams in the Northeast include the following:
- State and Federal agencies
- State departments of labor (wage and hour, workers’ compensation,
occupational safety and health, and education divisions)
- State departments of education (School-to-Work and vocational
education offices)
- State departments of health (injury prevention, adolescent
health, and occupational health programs)
- Workforce investment boards (and the State office that
oversees the boards)
- Regional offices of Federal OSHA and the Wage and Hour
Division of the United States Department of Labor.
- Persons who work directly with young people
- Business and vocational education teachers
- Job training program staff
- Youth development program operators
- Employers
- Representatives from organizations with an expertise and
interest in occupational safety or adolescent health
- COSH
- Labor unions
- Safety councils, representing businesses in the State
- Chambers of commerce
- Hospitals and health care organizations
- State school board insurance providers
- Safe Kids Coalitions, Safe Communities coalitions, and
other community-based injury prevention programs
- University departments of workplace environment and occupational
safety
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Working in the Community
Community projects that work directly with youth provide a sense that the
team is making a difference. This can sustain the team over the longer period
needed to institutionalize young worker safety training in job programs, implement
curricula in schools, or change State labor laws. An enthusiastic teacher,
public health professional, or youth safety advocate can do much with a small
grant, some young worker safety materials, and a bit of technical assistance.
Each State team recruited and helped a community agency or organization implement
an educational project to prevent injuries to young workers. NYWRC provided
technical assistance and $2,500 stipends to each community project. The State
teams created their own criteria for awarding these stipends. They assisted
the community projects and often found ways of using the strategies and materials
created by these projects in other communities in the State (and the region).
A community project that generated community support and demonstrated effectiveness
could provide the foundation for implementing similar projects in other communities
or across the State, or replicating the project in other States in the region.
Working Regionally
With support from the NYWRC, the State teams established the Northeast Young
Worker Network. Resource Center staff brought the teams together once a year
and shared information, ideas, resources, and materials throughout the year.
This networking benefits individual States and the region as a whole in a variety
of ways. Brochures and other materials created by one State or community are
often adapted for use in other States or communities. Impending Federal legislative
or rule changes that escape the notice of one State team may be caught by another.
Activities in one State sometimes catalyze action in its neighbors. And the
regional meetings demonstrate to others a widespread and active interest in
young worker safety.
| The Power of Regional
Coordination |
Christine Miara coordinates the Young Worker Safety Resource
Center. Here, she speaks to the value of having representatives
from all the young worker State teams meet once a year at a networking
and training event:
“Robin Dewey [our training consultant from the University
of California at Berkeley Labor Occupational Health Program]
and I had several goals for our annual regional meetings. We wanted
to give participants the opportunity to showcase educational
resources they had developed over the past year. We wanted to provide
new research and information about national initiatives. And we
hoped that by allowing people from each State and community to
describe their activities, those in the other States would be motivated
to expand the scope of their work.
“Based on evaluations and participant feedback, it would
seem that we met these goals. For example, at the end of the
meeting at which New Hampshire shared its young worker CD-ROM and
book cover, many people from other States said that they planned
to adapt some of these ideas and materials.
“At another meeting, the head of the United States Department
of Labor’s Child Labor and Special Employment Team described
effective ways to strengthen and enforce child labor laws,
and several States discussed specific child labor restrictions
they had passed. Hearing from their counterparts in other States
and having the issue put in a national context encouraged members
of several State teams to move beyond a purely educational
approach to young worker safety.
“People who are relatively new to an issue, such as young
worker safety, will be much more motivated and able to undertake
a broad range of activities if they can come together to learn
from, and hold discussions with, experts and colleagues. Regional
collaboration also helps States avoid duplication of efforts
and maximize the use of limited resources.”
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