Halloween & labor laws

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    Halloween is known for trick-or-treating and scary movies, but have you considered its implications on labor laws?Thousands of young adults (and even teens) seek temporary jobs at short-term Halloween haunted houses and events. Due to their short-term nature, a lot of labor laws are ignored, leading to dangerous and exploitative work environments at these jobs.


A good example of this is a news headline from mid-October this year. The headline reads “Woman blames haunted house company, worker for injuries.” To summarize, a lawsuit was filed against the Thirteenth Floor Entertainment Group, which runs the New Orleans Nightmare Haunted House. The lawsuit itself is showing how ignoring labor laws can create public danger: it claims a customer was seriously hurt and knocked out after an actor who wasn't properly trained or supervised—a direct outcome of trying to save money on staff—carelessly jumped and hit her.


This isn't the only example—it’s a pattern. Labor laws themselves are in place to protect employees and, in turn, the general public from greedy business practices. These types of jobs specifically are more common to have violations of labor laws, due to the short-term and careless nature of these temporary seasonal jobs near Halloween and other holidays. This pattern of labor law neglect is often very visible through common violations like wage theft, where seasonal workers are denied mandated overtime pay for working far more than 40 hours a week, or through the businesses' misclassification of employees as "volunteers" to avoid paying even the minimum wage. Wage theft isn’t the only problem; these types of jobs are plagued with hazardous working environments, untrained staff, and a whole load of other violations and issues as well.



    While this Halloween season is defined by costumes and masks, the biggest deception is the industry's ability to hide its widespread labor law neglect behind the facade of seasonal fun, turning temporary jobs into dangerous and exploitative workplaces.


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