Dangerous jobs
In Maine, no one under 18 years old may do work that involves:
- Driving a vehicle or forklift
- Using meat slicers or power-driven bakery machines
- Serving or selling alcoholic beverages (17-year-olds can serve or sell
liquor if supervised by someone 21 or older)
- Using a circular saw, band saw, guillotine shears, or a box crusher
- Using power-driven woodworking machines
- Working in wrecking, demolition, shipbreaking, or excavation
- Exposure to radioactive substances
- Using power-driven paper-products machines
- Using power-driven metal-forming, punching, or shearing machines
- Manufacturing brick, tile, or similar products
- Manufacturing explosives or storing explosives
- Mining, logging, or sawmilling
- Using a power-driven hoisting apparatus
- Slaughtering, packing, or processing meat
- Most roofing or railway operations
- Working in foundries or around blast furnaces
- Manufacturing hazardous products such as phosphorus matches
- Working as a firefighter or engineer on a boat
- Working alone in a cash-based business
NO ONE under 16 years old may do work that involves:
- Any work in a manufacturing facility (e.g. factory)*
- Operating any power-driven machinery (except machines in offices, retail
stores, and food service, and gasoline pumps)
- Cooking (except at soda fountains, lunch counters, snack bars, or cafeteria
serving counters) or baking
- Working in freezers or meat coolers
- Working in construction, transportation, communications, or public utilities
- Working in warehouses (except clerical)
- Loading or unloading trucks, railroad cars, or conveyors
- Working on ladders or scaffolds
- Washing windows in a public or commercial building if the window sill is
more than 10 feet above the ground
- Laundering in a commercial laundry or dry cleaning establishment
- Working in a pool room, billiard room, or bowling alley
- Working as a public messenger or chamber maid
- Any processing operations (as in meat, fish, or poultry processing or cracking
nuts)
- Working in a hotel or motel (except 15-year-olds can work in the office,
lobby, kitchen, or dining room)
- Any mining
- Working around boilers or in engine rooms
- Doing industrial homework
- Handling, serving or selling alcoholic beverages (15-year-olds can handle
liquor - stocking and carrying, for example - but not serve or sell it)
- Any of the occupations prohibited for all minors under the age of 18
- Any work that the Maine Department of Labor determines to be dangerous to
the health and well-being of minors
*Except in office, retail, or customer service/sales areas, in a separate
room away from manufacturing or processing operations, or outside in non-hazardous
work on the grounds.
Persons under 14 may not work in most businesses. There are a few exception
to this, e.g. as news carriers, on farms, and in entertainment.
NOTE: These are not complete lists and there are some exceptions. Rules differ
for farm work. The Maine Department of Labor can give you more information.
Call toll-free 1-877-SAFE-345; TTY Maine relay 711 (for deaf or hard of hearing).
Respect yourself. Protect yourself.
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