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It’s been difficult to keep up with the number of Republican efforts in recent years to roll back child labor laws. The Guardian reported in the fall that GOP policymakers at the state level “have led efforts to roll back child labor protections, with bills introduced in at least 16 states.”
To be sure, not all of the measures are identical. In some states, Republicans want to scrap age verification requirements for employers. In other states, they want minors to be able to serve alcohol. A Washington Post report last year noted some state GOP officials also eyed proposals to allow kids as young as 14 to “work certain jobs in meatpacking plants and shield businesses from civil liability if a child laborer is sickened.”
Evidently, related efforts are underway again this year, and this NoLa.com report out of Louisiana stood out as especially striking.
A Louisiana House committee voted Thursday to repeal a law requiring employers to give child workers lunch breaks and to cut unemployment benefits — part of a push by Republicans to remove constraints on employers and reduce aid for injured and unemployed workers.
Evidently, now that Republicans control all of the levers of power in Louisiana again — former Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards stepped down after two terms earlier this year — Republican Gov. Jeff Landry directed officials to “reform” the state’s business environment.
Some GOP officials are taking that directive quite seriously — to the point that they’re advancing a plan to scrap requirements for lunch breaks for child workers.
According to the local report, the proposal is being championed by Republican state Rep. Roger Wilder, who owns some smoothie franchises across the region, and who said many of his child employees want to work without lunch breaks.
“The wording is ‘We’re here to harm children.’ Give me a break,” he said. “These are young adults.”
For the record, the kids might very well be young, but they’re minors, not adults.
The reporting comes with some caveats: The bill this week passed a state legislative committee, and it’s headed to the state House floor in Louisiana, but it hasn’t yet become law. There’s still time, in other words, for the measure to be amended and/or defeated. But the bigger picture is nevertheless unmistakable: In contemporary politics, Republican governance, especially at the state level, is increasingly invested in rolling back child-labor safeguards.
As for why officials in so many states are “reforming” their child-labor laws — an issue that appeared to be relatively settled until quite recently — there’s reason to believe the sudden flurry is not coincidental.
The Washington Post last year highlighted the role of something called the Foundation for Government Accountability, which is taking the lead on “maneuvering” these changes through state legislatures.
The Florida-based think tank and its lobbying arm, the Opportunity Solutions Project, have found remarkable success among Republicans to relax regulations that prevent children from working long hours in dangerous conditions. And they are gaining traction at a time the Biden administration is scrambling to enforce existing labor protections for children. … Since 2016, the FGA’s Opportunity Solutions Project has hired 115 lobbyists across the country with a presence in 22 states, according to the nonpartisan political watchdog group OpenSecrets.
With this in mind, there’s no reason to expect these measures to disappear anytime soon.
We’re in fuckin 1834 motherfucker
You are a child worker. Bitch, you live in Arkansas. You are a peasant. You need to give your fuckin’ manager the grain. Your fucking children, you’ve had 15 children. You’ve never taken a bath. You’ve literally never. washed. your. penis. You’ve never used toilet paper. Motherfucker, you have worms. You are dying. You’ve had 40 children, 3 of them are alive. 2 of them are workers in the Duke’s meat packing plant.
Bitch, the greatest thing you can hope for is to die at the old age of 36. You fucking can’t read. You don’t know what a union is. You work 15 hour days, you are the worst gamer of all time. You don’t know shit. You literally probably don’t even know what the direction ‘left’ is. I’m sure some industrialist guy is gonna get mad at me for this, bitch I’ve been to the factory.
Motherfucker, you gotta recognize where you are, and then you gotta get passed that. You gotta be unemotional. You can’t sink into this hole. You live in the oubliette. Your job is to crawl up the ladder, motherfucker. You live in the HOLE. You’re in the HOLE. You are a RAT. And the rat, when he’s in the hole gets fucked. People only throw trash in the hole.
You need to eat a body. And you need to carry the plague. And you need to carry a plague around this whole world, that will change this whole fuckin world. And all your enemies will vomit black bile and will choke on blood and will grow boils and die. But only if you get together with your other RATS. And you come up with some kind of super plague, to fuckin end your enemies and…
End. This. Nightmare.
I swear there’s something about taking food away from children specifically that gets republicans off.
“Child workers”
And Biden’s admin doesn’t do jack shit. This super hero AG Merrick Garland is fucking useless as well.