Victorian employers urged to respect child employment laws

Victorian business owners have been called upon to honour “back-to-school” working restrictions for child employees. These reminders form part of the larger, ongoing child employment discussion.

Wage Inspectorate Victoria (WIV), the state’s child employment regulator, has called on local businesses to update their rosters ahead of a fresh school semester. In Victoria, licenced businesses can hire children under 15 years of age for up to six hours per day and 30 hours per week.

However, these limits apply only during school holidays. During the semester, children can work a maximum of three hours a day and 12 hours per week.

“Many businesses hire kids over the school holidays to help manage holiday crowds, particularly in retail and hospitality. Those businesses can keep offering kids shifts when the school term starts, but they need to ensure they’re doing so legally,” said acting commissioner of the WIV, Lily Dekic.

“Work rosters for kids under 15 cannot be set-and-forget. At the start of the school term, employers need to review rosters to ensure kids aren’t working more than three hours a day or 12 hours a week, and never during school hours.”

Breaching the state’s child employment laws, said WIV, is a crime and can attract fines of up to $200,000. Last year, 11 businesses were prosecuted by WIV for such breaches, while others received official warnings.

The reminder comes off the back of recent calls for tighter child employment regulation at the national level, with some suggesting the establishment of a minimum working age is a national issue as opposed to something to be handled state by state.

Currently, there is a broad diversity of approaches when it comes to handling minimum working age. Consider the following:

• The ACT allows children under 15 years of age to perform “light work”.
• The Northern Territory prohibits children under 15 from working between 10pm and 6am.
• Queensland has a minimum working age of 13 except for jobs like delivery work (which you can start at 11 years old).
• NSW prohibits only certain kinds of work for those under 18 years of age.
• South Australia and Tasmania simply prevent children from working during school hours.

The wide range of approaches has encouraged some to call for national uniformity. “Harmonisation” is what it’s called when states relinquish their lawmaking power over a given area of law and “refer” the authority to the federal government. Under our Constitution, lawmaking powers reside with the states and territories unless specifically listed.

This includes issues like national defence, taxation, and interstate trade and commerce. While harmonisation is not necessary in all areas of law – indeed, sometimes it would be ludicrous – some call for it by their nature.

National minimum employment age

As noted in a recent HR Leader article, some see the minimum employment age as one such issue. Queensland University of Technology Professor Paula McDonald, for example, said the current state-by-state approach has resulted in a “really patchy and insufficient regulatory framework”.

Professor McDonald added that consistent laws or a national standard would better protect working children, who tend to be more vulnerable to exploitation and discrimination through things like wage theft, sexual harassment, and bullying.

In March last year, a parliamentary committee report recommended that Australia should ratify an international convention on child employment, which would set the minimum working age at 15 years. Chair of the parliamentary committee, Josh Wilson, said doing so would lend credibility to the country when it comes to “promoting strong measures to eliminate child labour in the Asia-Pacific” region.

With ongoing workforce shortages, more and more business owners have been opening their doors to younger workers. In 2022, there were an estimated half a million employees under the age of 17 working in Australia.

“I don’t think anyone is saying that young people shouldn’t be able to work part-time, earn some money, and develop life skills and great friendships,” the SDA Union’s Josh Peak told ABC News.

“There [is] a range of problems, though, when young and inexperienced people do enter the workforce, particularly around their knowledge of what’s right and wrong.”