New regulations have come into force that affect young people in the period between school leaving age and legal adulthood at the age of 18. Employment law specialist Nichola Upperton-Evans, a partner at Rowe Cohen, offers guidelines to employers trying to navigate the shifting sands of adolescents' employment legislation.
Many industries and sectors have come to rely on young people, barely out of school and up to 18, to make a contribution to their workforce. School leavers who have elected not to further their formal education are to be found working in such diverse sectors as retailing, childcare, catering and hotel keeping, agriculture and animal husbandry, food processing, light industry, cinemas and entertainment. Youngsters can be willing, conscientious and enthusiastic workers, with abundant energy and the ability to learn new skills very readily. However, they have often been exploited by being required to work long hours for very low pay.
Provided they have reached the age at which they are entitled to abandon their studies, school-leavers have many of the same rights as any other worker from the moment they pass through the school gates. That said, even employers who pride themselves on being reasonably familiar with the regulations affecting adult employment often admit to being a bit vague when pressed about the rights of adolescent workers. Small wonder. The enforcement of 'in-betweens' employment legislation is divided between several local and national bodies and government departments.
The jury is still out on some of the fine detail of the European legislation that applies to this area of law – various countries, including the UK, are still deciding whether or not to 'opt out' of bits that don't quite suit us.
A series of long-standing assumptions about employing school leavers and youngsters are certainly no longer valid. The moment a person – of any age – begins to undertake a regular paid task for another person (or entity) a contract of employment exists between them. Uttering a remark like, 'I'll give you a shot at it for a few weeks to see how you shape up', or, 'I could do with an extra pair of hands in the evenings and at weekends', now creates an employment contract between you and the teenager which has all manner of legal bells and whistles attached to it.
By way of illustration, most employers are blissfully unaware that control of the employment of any child under the age of 16 in the UK falls – oddly, some would say – under the umbrella of the Department of Health (details on their website). It's nothing to do with the DTI, Department of Employment or your local authority.
The moment an employee reaches his or her 16th birthday however, everything changes. Enforcement of the rules then rests somewhere between the Health and Safety Executive, your local authority Environment Department, various other industrial bodies, like the Vehicle and Operator Service Authority, and the Employment Tribunal Service.
Working model
For those aged between 15 and 18, the European Working Time Directive is a good starting point. There has been a great deal of consultation and discussion surrounding this over the past couple of years. For example, should children and young people working in family-owned olive groves in Greece be bound by the same rules as British youngsters working as cinema attendants and mobile fairground workers? The talking is over, however, and The Working Time Regulations within the Young Workers Directive are now very specific.
The basic protection and employment rights for young workers aged between 15 and 18 are as follows.
- There is a restricted period between 10pm and 6am (or between 11pm and 7am) when they are not permitted to work.
- There are exemptions – hospital workers, those involved in cultural, artistic, advertising or sporting activities where it is necessary for them to work. There is an exemption from 12 midnight to 4am for agriculture, retail trading, postal/newspaper delivery, catering, hotel and pub work, and the armed forces.
In addition, these rules apply to all workers.
- Although they may choose to work more hours if they so wish – no worker can be required to work more than an average of 48 hours a week.
- Night workers cannot be required to work more than 8 hours in a 24 hour period. They have an automatic right to free health assessments.
- Workers have a right to 11 hours of rest a day.
- Workers have a right to one day off per week.
- They have the right to a rest from work – in the workplace – if the working day exceeds six hours.
- Workers are entitled to four weeks of fully paid leave a year.
The regulations were extended in August this year to cover those who work in road, sea, inland waterways, railways and lake transport and those in the offshore exploration and production sector and aviation. Rules concerning the minimum wage and the minimum length of employment needed to qualify for a paid notice period and paid holiday leave are on the point of being finalised.
Check it out
So before you offer a casual holiday job to a sixth-former or a permanent job to a school-leaver, think about who you'll have to answer to if you get it wrong. This is a good time to forget everything you thought you knew (or didn't know) about employing youngsters and adolescents. I would advise careful scrutiny of the appropriate Government website – the DTI is a good starting point.
