Youth

AJ, 15, a student at Stephen Leacock Secondary School in Scarborough, Ontario, was one of the entrants in the MySafeWork essay contest; part of her essay is shown here:

Students at work continue to get injured on the job. There are many reasons for this happening. Some are not properly trained, some are not trained at all, some are careless, or they don't work in a safe environment.

During this season of high work activity for teens, some sobering statistics to consider:

Every year, approximately 200,000 teenagers in the United States are injured on the job, and about 70 teens are killed at work. Every six minutes, a teenager is injured seriously enough on the job to require treatment in a hospital emergency room.

Are these numbers acceptable to anyone? Solutions, anyone?

CARP - the Canadian Association for Retired Persons - doesn't want to be considered that anymore; they're now Canada's Association for the 50Plus. That doesn't bode well for the younger generation.

According to Mose Znamier, the new executive director of CARP, Baby Boomers - he calls them Zoomers (Boomers + Zip) - are not taking the off-ramp from work like their preceding generation did approaching 65.

Teen Crushed to Death by Forklift reads the headline today: a 16-year-old kid on the second day of his job at a Rona lumberyard in Alberta. Apparently Mitchell Tanner was hanging off the side of a forklift as it was being driven, and the vehicle tipped over on top of Mitchell.

I was blown away by a Grade 8 student's question at the safety presentation I was giving at Earl Beatty Junior and Senior Public School in Toronto, Ontario. The kid stood up and asked:

"What about safety requirements for volunteers?"