For 11 years I had been contracting as a house mover, and throughout January 2003, I was watched around 30 hours a week by L&I inspectors. In February, I received fines of $34,000. for “employing” two of my boys (then 11 and almost 14) and subjecting them to an “unreasonable risk,” primarily working on my own property. They claimed that if I did “engage, suffer, or permit” my children to do “appreciable work” for a “family enterprise,” except for agricultural or domestic labor in and around my private home, I had “employed” them, even if it was while training the child. Their penalties were:
$1000/day for “to work during school hours” even though we home-school.
$1000/day to work “without an order from a superior court judge.”
$1000/day for them “to work more than ten feet above the ground level.”
$1000/day for them “to work on a construction site” (our private property).
$1000/day for them “to work in the proximity of [our] heavy equipment.”
$1000/day for them “to operate a [our] bulldozer and backhoe.”
$1000/day for being a “helper on a public roadway.”
$1000/day for “no valid Minor Work Permit”
$1000/day for “no Parent/School Authorization” form signed.
CPS agents, working with L&I, then tried to abduct my son, Zach, while he was with me in the L&I building. Next, L&I got a Court Order to keep my children off all work sites, off all equipment, and less than ten feet off the ground, and it “directed …all persons in active concert…to remove” my boys from any work site or equipment! Remember, I owned the work site! Can you imagine that a neighbor or police can now forcibly remove your child from your family business and private property because they worked with their dad?
