IT'S NOT TOO LATE TO SEND AN EMAIL TO YOUR SENATOR URGING A NO VOTE ON HB 255
House Bill Would Allow Kids to Work Unlimited Hours and In More Dangerous Jobs
- Reduces the list of state prohibited jobs that the US Department of Labor recognizes as hazardous
- Creates more avenues where kids younger than 16 can work hours beyond what is allowed under federal law, including for children who have been expelled from school or have a child to support
For 16 & 17 year olds, HB 255 allows their employers to schedule them for:
- Unlimited hours per day, even on school days (and potentially during school hours, outside of a Department of Education approved co-op program).
- Unlimited hours per week, even while school is in session.
- For late or overnight shifts, including on school nights.
LEARN MORE: "HB 255 WEAKENS CHILD LABOR LAWS AND WILL FUEL MORE SCHOOL DROPOUTS"
By BERRY CRAIG
Alliance for Retired Americans
Easter is approaching, and the resurrection of bad bills is at hand in the General Assembly, says labor activist Liles Taylor.
The Kentucky State AFL-CIO's political coordinator doubts the spirit of the gospel is reflected in HB 255, the legislation he singled out. Passed by the Republican supermajority House last month, the measure "would abolish the state’s child labor laws, in effect replacing them with looser federal standards," wrote Zina Hutton in Governing. "The bill would also increase the number of hours that 16- and 17-year-olds can work on school days from six to eight. They’d be able to work up to 30 hours per week during the school year, or even more if their parents approve and they maintain at least a 2.0 grade point average."
Said Taylor, "This is really a terrible bill. It puts kids at increased risk of dropping out of school, not to mention that it gives no consideration to kids who should be asleep at home in preparation for school."
The state AFL-CIO vehemently objects to HB 255. But Taylor expects other apparently dormant bills labor strongly opposes will spring to life as the session wanes. "We are in the resurrection season," said Taylor, a Methodist.
Last Thursday, HB 255, sponsored by Rep. Philip Pratt, R-Georgetown, was voted down in the Senate Committee on Economic Development, Tourism and Labor.
Jesus's resurrection took three days, according to the Bible. The rebirth of HB 255 required just one. On Friday, Pratt's pet returned from the dead and passed out of the committee. It is headed for a vote in the full Senate, where the Republicans also enjoy a supermajority.
Sens. Mike Wilson, R-Bowling Green, and Gary Boswell, R-Owensboro, were the resurrection men. Wilson switched from thumbs down to thumbs up; Boswell, who was elsewhere at Thursday's committee meeting, showed up Friday and voted yes.
A GOP-sponsored bill getting shot down in a GOP-majority committee is a rarity, Taylor said.
Anyway, time was, state officials were proud to point to stricter standards to protect their youthful constituents than what Uncle Sam mandated. But HB 255 reflects a nationwide conservative assault on child labor laws in Republican-run legislatures. Though Gov. Andy Beshear is a Democrat who opposes HB 255, the GOP boasts a veto-proof supermajority in the House and Senate.
"At a time when serious child labor violations are on the rise in hazardous meatpacking and manufacturing jobs, several state legislatures are weakening—or threatening to weaken—child labor protections," says a current report from the Economic Policy Institute. "The trend reflects a coordinated multi-industry push to expand employer access to low-wage labor and weaken state child labor laws in ways that contradict federal protections, in pursuit of longer-term industry-backed goals to rewrite federal child labor laws and other worker protections for the whole country. Children of families in poverty, and especially Black, brown, and immigrant youth, stand to suffer the most harm from such changes."
Wrote Liam Niemeyer in The Kentucky Lantern: "An analysis of the bill by the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy, a progressive think tank, also found the legislation could allow some minors under the age of 16 to work in more hazardous occupations currently prohibited by state and federal law, such as using power-driven mowers and cutters, catching poultry to prepare for transport, communications and public utilities and more. Pratt, in responding to a question from a Democrat, said that the state can’t 'trump' federal law."
Pratt couldn't be prouder of his bill. "I think this is good to get people out into the workplace, get them some work experience, and hopefully they’ll get off the couch, quit playing Nintendo games and actually make money,” Niemeyer quoted Pratt in the Lantern.
People? Read minors.
Lawmakers like Pratt "offer fatuous justifications for such incursions into long-settled practice," wrote Steve Fraser in TomDispatch. "Working, they tell us, will get kids off their computers or video games or away from the TV."
I don't know if Pratt swigs Cokes. But his comments rhyme with remarks from Coca-Cola company co-founder Asa Candler: "The most beautiful sight that we see is the child at labor. As early as he may get at labor the more beautiful, the more useful does his life get to be.”
Rep. Richard Heath, R-Mayfield, also an HB 255 fan, subbed for the absent Pratt at Friday's meeting. In presenting the bill, he recalled his youth down on the farm. “It’s a good thing this wasn’t a law when I was growing up," Niemeyer quoted Heath. "Our dad wouldn’t have been able to put out a crop.”
Niemeyer pointed out that "child labor laws do not apply to children working on their parents’ farm." After hearing Heath's remarks, Murray State University historian Brian Clardy wonders how many lawmakers who support HB 255 even know how child labor laws work.
(Not coincidentally, Pratt, Heath and other Republicans pushing HB 255 are among the most anti-labor lawmakers in Frankfort. Both Pratt and Heath were in the GOP majority that approved a "right to work" law and repealed the state prevailing wage law in 2017. Both are in the front ranks of the continuing Republican assault on workers' rights.)
States started passing child labor laws in the early 20th century in response to the widespread brutal exploitation of children by the owners of the nation's factories, mines and mills. "The reason child labor laws came about was because we needed to protect children--we needed to have them in school, we needed to protect them from abuse by the private sector," said Clardy. "There was also this cynical view that children were expendable, especially poor children."
Before child labor laws--and unions--children as young as 10 had to work to help their poorly paid parents make ends meet. The ends almost never met.
Children made less than adults--and women less than men. Thousands of children--and adults--were killed, maimed or made chronically ill working in unsafe factories.
Federal child labor laws buttressed state laws.
Clardy said Republicans and Democrats supported child labor laws, which unions championed. "Republicans certainly did--definitely did," added Clardy. "There was this consensus that this was something that we needed to do. Now it seems as though the Kentucky General Assembly has not only gone back to a regressive period but that they are also relishing it."
While Democrats are united against HB 255, few Republicans oppose it.
Watering down or abolishing child labor laws "robs children of their childhood," said Clardy, adding that supporters of legislation like HB 255 "are taking us back to a time we don't need to relive. That's the scary part. As a historian, I don't want to relive it because I know the damage it did to people and families and to their lives."
Clardy said he is sorry to see that "the party of Lincoln has become the party of Trump and Ebenezer Scrooge."