Vermont Child Labor Law Poster

Child Labor Law
Non-Agricultural Employment

21 V.S.A. § 434

Children ages 14 and 15 MAY NOT work in hazardous occupations and may not work in communications or public utilities
jobs, construction or repair jobs, drive a motor vehicle, manufacturing and mining jobs, power-driven machinery or hoisting
apparatus other than typical office machines, processing occupations, public messenger jobs, transporting persons or
property, workrooms where products are manufactured, mined or processed, or warehoused and storaged.
Children ages 14 and 15 MAY work outside of school hours in various non-manufacturing, non-mining, non-hazardous jobs
under the following conditions:
No more than 3 hours on a school day or 18 hours in a school week; 8 hours on a non-school day or 40 hours in a nonschool week;
Work may not begin before 7 a.m. or end after 7 p.m.;
From June 1 through Labor Day, hours are extended to 9 p.m.;
Permitted jobs include office, grocery store, retail store, restaurant, amusement park, or gasoline station.
Children Ages 16 - 18
An employee must be at least 16 years old to work most jobs. No person less than 18 years old may work in hazardous
occupations.
Hazardous Occupations
Manufacturing and storing explosives, driving a motor vehicle and being an outside helper on a motor vehicle; coal mining,
logging and saw-milling, power-driven woodworking machines, exposure to radioactive substances, power-driven hoisting
apparatus, power-driven metal-forming, punching, and shearing machines, mining (other than coal mining), meat packing or
processing, power-driven bakery machines, power-driven paper-product machines, manufacturing brick, tile, and related
products, power-driven circular saws, band saws, and guillotine shears, wrecking, demolition, and shipbreaking operations,
roofing operations, or excavation operations.

A person must be at least 18 years old to work in any of the hazardous non-farm jobs listed.

Agricultural Employment
Once a person turns 16 years old, they can do any job in agriculture.
A youth 14 or 15 years old can work in agriculture, on any farm, but only in non-hazardous jobs.
A youth 12 or 13 years old can only work in agriculture on a farm if a parent has given written permission or if a parent is
working on the same farm as their child, and only in non-hazardous jobs.
If the youth is younger than 12, they can only work in agriculture on “small” farms that are exempt from minimum wage
requirements. “Small” farm refers to any farm that did not use more than 500 “man-days” of agricultural labor in any calendar
quarter (3-month period) during the preceding calendar year. “Man-day” refers to any day during which an employee works at
least one hour. If the farm is “small,” workers under 12 years of age can only be employed with a parent’s permission and
only in non-hazardous jobs.
Hazardous agricultural occupations include:
Operating a tractor of over 20 power-take-off horsepower or connecting or disconnecting parts to such a tractor;
Operating or helping to operate a corn picker, cotton picker, grain combine, hay mower, forage harvester, hay baler, potato
digger, or mobile pea viner, feed grinder, crop dryer, forage blower, auger conveyor, or the unloading mechanism of a nongravity-type self-unloading wagon or trailer; or, power post-hole digger, power post driver, or non-walking-type rotary tiller;
Trencher or earthmoving equipment, fork lift, potato combine, or power-driven circular, band or chainsaw;
Working on a farm in a yard, pen, or stall occupied by a bull, boar, or stud horse for breeding; a sow with suckling pigs or a
cow with newborn calf with an umbilical cord present;
Loading, unloading, felling, bucking, or skidding timber with a large end diameter of more than 6 inches;
Working from a ladder or scaffold at a height of over 20 feet;
Driving a bus, truck, or automobile when transporting passengers, or riding on a tractor as a passenger or helper.

THIS IS A MANDATORY POSTER
Vermont Department of Labor
P.O. Box 488, Montpelier, VT
[email protected]
(802) 828-4000 | Fax: (802) 865-7655