[Opinion] The young victims of work that we do not want to see

A Wednesday like so many others in a high school in Montreal North. “Who worked last night? In the fifth grade, nearly half of the students raise their hands. The day before, a Tuesday like so many others, so they didn’t have time to open The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hydethe novel they’re supposed to be reading right now.

“Who worked last weekend? Almost all hands go up. Granted, Amos High School students, ages 16 to 20, are older than average. No wonder they work part-time or full-time. That’s why their French teacher invited me, the journalist, to talk to them about occupational health and safety.

“What is the minimum legal age to work in Quebec? The answers fuse, all bad. The correct answer is, however, childishly simple: there is no legal minimum age, and has been for 42 years. Yes, an 11-year-old schoolgirl can work every night of the week if her parents agree. From the age of 14, she won’t even need to ask their permission. Because at this age, in matters of employment, “the minor […] is deemed to be of age”, according to the Civil Code.

It should no longer be surprising to learn that, each year, hundreds of children are injured seriously enough to be compensated by the Commission for Standards, Equity, Health and Safety at Work (CNESST) . In 2021, this was the case for 203 children under the age of 16; the youngest was 12 years old. We know that these figures underestimate the extent of the problem. Many young people are unaware of the existence of the CNESST and, among those who know about it, some hesitate to make a claim for fear of losing their job.

Is this acceptable?

Hundreds of tweens and teens, maybe even several hundred, are injured on the job each year. It’s intolerable, of course — one injured will always be one too many — but is it acceptable? This is the far more difficult question that Quebec refuses to ask itself.

In the back of the class, Laurie-Anne raises her hand. Impossible not to see her candy pink nails. She was 15 when she burned her right forearm while cleaning the popcorn machine at the cinema where she worked. “It hurt a lot,” she said, “and I continued my work crying. “She kept photos of the blister, impressive. Three years later, the scar is still visible. No one had told her that the scourer she splashed herself with required the use of protective gloves.

Some will keep less superficial scars. Take the case of the young workers who come to the emergency rooms of the four Quebec hospitals that participate in the CHIRPT (Canadian Hospital Injury Prevention Research and Information System), a federal research program on injuries. Between 2011 and 2021, under-16s who received treatment for an accident at work numbered 136; the youngest was 12 years old. In this group, one in four was seen for “head trauma”, “eye injury”, “fracture” or “serious injury including amputation”. Yes, amputation.

I ask the question: is it acceptable? Is this the price Quebecers are willing to pay for the benefit of companies that recruit children on the cheap? (Their salary is equal to that of adults, but not the social contributions paid by the employer, which are a little lower.) The answer is yes, if I trust the reactions provoked by my articles for… 31 years.

In “The 60-hour week”, published in News in 1991, I revealed that the 1907 law prohibiting child labor had been repealed by René Lévesque in 1980 as part of the occupational health and safety reform, which almost everyone had missed. Pre-teens worked at night legally! This “paper” caused an uproar. The Liberal government of the day asked four advisory councils to comment. One of them, the Conseil de la famille, called on Quebec not to prohibit child labor but to “mark it out”.

Robert Bourassa’s government even turned a deaf ear, and it was not until the victory of PQ member Lucien Bouchard in 1995 that the Act respecting labor standards was amended. It now prohibits night work for children of school age and tasks “likely” to harm their health or their education.

A legal minimum age

Noting the progression of accidents, I returned to the subject over the decades. In “To kill oneself at work”, published in News in 2008, I focused on three deaths that occurred that year: a 14-year-old garbage collector (in Gaspésie), a 13-year-old agricultural worker (in Montérégie) and a 16-year-old sawmill employee (in ‘Outaouais). Last spring, this time in The Press, I reported that the number of victims had exploded, 203 injured under the age of 16 in 2021, due to the shortage of manpower. That is to say four times more than the figure I gave in my first article… published in 1991!

Before the election campaign, Liberal MP Marwah Rizqy certainly raised the issue in the National Assembly, but the theme was not mentioned, not even lip service, in the leaders’ debates. Clearly, more than one political party fears upsetting proud parents to see the bigger one working.

François Legault does not like the “chicane”, and the adoption of a legal minimum age, like all the other provinces, could cause quite one. Especially since adults, in this case, find it difficult to approach the subject other than through their personal experience, which is generally good, fortunately. They quickly forget the risks of all kinds that teenagers run at work. Too bad if they burn themselves with oil at 168 degrees (fries cooking temperature) or if they are sexually assaulted at their workplace?

The collective interest, which would make us see beyond the end of our noses, value education in the broad sense as well as in the narrow sense and, above all, take into account the interests of the child, is swept away under the carpet. And to think that Canada ratified, in 2016, Convention 138 of the International Labor Organization, thereby committing to set a minimum age and gradually increase it. Without forgetting that, as early as 1991, the Quebec government declared itself “bound” by the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which provides for the setting of a minimum age for admission to employment…

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