A lumber company based in Dundee, Ohio has paid $22,093 in fines related to a sawmill injury involving a teenage worker.
Walnut Creek Lumber Ltd. agreed to the financial penalty after the U.S. Department of Labor said a 15-year-old worker who got stuck in the gears of a motorized woodworking machine should never have performed the task in the first place.
Regulators said federal child labor laws prohibit minors under 18 from working in hazardous occupations.
The company employed teenage workers to move and stack pieces of wood to be processed into lumber, according to the DOL.
“No child should ever be exposed to dangerous work machinery,” Matthew Utley, DOL̵
7;s Wage and Hour Division district director, said in a statement.The DOL said wage and hour investigators also learned that the company employed four other minors under the age of 16 outside of the hours allowed under the Fair Labor Standards Act.
The exact date of the sawmill incident was not given, and the DOL did not elaborate on the specific nature of the teenager’s injuries.
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