ABSTRACT
By the mid-1990s child and youth labour was pronounced by both the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) to be one of the dominant issues of our time. Meanwhile, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has identified young employees as a high-risk group of workers. Successive New Zealand governments have been looking to employers to provide the apprenticeship training, which has been particularly difficult for small business employers as most lack resources and expertise. At the global level, several ILO Conventions stress the importance of legislation as a protective mechanism for organizing Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) for young workers. The study applied a triangulated methodological approach in which multiple data collection methods were used. The lack of reliable and complete data sets is argued to have significant detrimental ramifications for well-informed public policy on young workers. The power imbalance inherent in young people's working relationships constrains their ability to effect and improve their working conditions.
