Shirley Coble appreciates the business owners who gave her work when she was a teenager, and now that Coble is a business owner herself, she too employs teenagers.
"The reason I do that is because when I grew up, my parents didn't have a lot of money and it was real nice to get a job after school to buy new clothes and to be like everyone else," said Coble, owner of Shirley's Hot Dogs on the corner of D street and Fourth Avenue and Shirley's Snack Shack on Sixth Avenue, both in downtown Anchorage.
Coble employs two people this summer, including a 16-year-old young man who works in the afternoons at her hot dog stand.
"Grown people can get jobs anywhere. It's hard to start young," she said. "I would encourage anybody with a small business to give them a chance."
Employing teenagers, however, carries additional responsibility to comply with state and federal child labor laws.
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Horacio Monge, 16, stocks clothing as part of his job at Polar Bear Gifts in downtown Anchorage. Alaska law requires that Monge and other teenage workers get half-hour breaks after working for five consecutive hours.
PHOTO/Claire Chandler/AJOC
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When state and federal laws are not the same in a particular area, employers must comply with the law that has the most rigorous requirements, said Sandy Cannon, supervising investigator for the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development's Division of Labor Standards and Safety.
Cannon said that many employers violate child labor laws because they are misinformed about when they need to file permits for their teenage employees and when they need to give their teenage employees a break during the workday.
Employers must have a work permit for all employees age 14 through 16. Employers who have a restaurant designation and a license to sell alcohol can employ 16- and 17-year-olds if they have a work permit for them.
Filing a work permit is free, and the permits are available on the division's Web site.
Cannon said employers found without a necessary permit would not be allowed to employ the teenager until a permit is obtained. Statewide, the division has processed nearly 8,700 permits in the 11-month period ending in late May.
Another area that Alaska employers often unintentionally violate is not making sure their employees under age 18 take a 30-minute break during a six-hour workday or after working five consecutive hours, she said.
Teenage employees always must take the break, even if employees say they don't want to since they don't get paid during the time off. There also are no exceptions for employers who say they don't have the manpower to schedule the breaks for their young employees.
"When we confront the complaints, we are (sometimes) told that they don't have ways to give them the break," Cannon said. "We can't tell them how to run their business. We can just tell them law."
Polar Bear Gifts on Fifth Avenue in Anchorage hires additional staff to ensure there are enough people on the floor when it's time for a teenage employee to take a break, general manager J'son Soule said. He added that complying with the state's child labor laws is pretty easy, but it can be a nuisance to schedule the business's 35 to 40 employees according to their needs and what the law requires.
As a 16-year-old stocker for the gift shop, Horacio Monge shrugged off the extra rules, saying his employer has explained that he needs to take more breaks than some of the other employees, and doing so isn't a problem.
The labor standards division determines whether employees are taking the required breaks by cross-referencing their schedules with their timecards. When it appears employers are violating the law, the division can request records dating back two years.
Violating the law regulating breaks for minors can be expensive. For every half hour an employee under age 18 doesn't take off when required, the employer owes the employee $7.15 in wages and penalties. On average, employers found violating this law pay a fine of about $1,000, Cannon said.
The division monitors employers compliance with child labor laws by conducting onsite visits. Cannon said some of the visits are randomly selected while others are initiated because of a complaint.
The division conducted 633 onsite visits between July 1 and late May.
The child labor laws regulating work permits and breaks for minors are just some of the variety of state and federal laws restricting when and how minors can work. Other laws regulate how many hours and days teenagers can work, what type of work they can do and what equipment then can use, among other restrictions.
Web resources: Alaska Division of Labor Standards and Safety - www.labor.state.ak.us/lss; U.S. Department of Labor's Web site for young workers - www.youthrules.dol.gov.
Claire Chandler can be reached at claire.chandler@alaskajournal.com.
