EDITOR'S NOTE: Teamsters Local 89 and other unions have called a for Capitol Rotunda rally next Wednesday at 2:30 p.m. to protest "several anti-worker bills...under consideration in our state's capitol, such as dangerous and unproven driverless vehicle, an unethical rollback of child labor laws, and more."
By BERRY CRAIG
Alliance for Retired Americans
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes," Mark Twain supposedly said.
History is loudly rhyming in the current session of the General Assembly where Rep. Phillip Pratt, R-Georgetown, is sponsoring a bill to weaken the state's child labor laws.
“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,” Liam Niemeyer quoted Pratt in The Kentucky 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 enjoys a Coke. 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.”
Pratt's pet, House Bill 255, "would repeal Kentucky’s existing child labor laws and align them with federal laws, which are less restrictive for minors aged 16 and 17," explained Niemeyer. "Kentucky law currently limits the number of hours that 16- and 17-year-olds can work on a school day to six. The limit increases to eight hours on a non-school day and up to 30 hours total during a school week, unless they receive parental permission to work more and maintain at least a 2.0 grade point average. Federal law doesn’t have any daily or weekly hourly work limits for ages 16 and 17. Kentucky law also prohibits minors aged 16 and 17 from working later than 11 p.m.; federal law places no limits."
You can bet that if Trump gets reelected and the Republicans flip the Senate, federal child labor law will be significantly watered down if not abolished.
Pratt's bill, which has passed out of committee with only Republican support, isn't an outlier. "In states across the country, Republican governors and GOP-controlled legislatures are pushing forward laws that roll back protections against child labor," warns the SMART union website. "Some have already succeeded."
Kentucky's governor, Democrat Andy Beshear, is not a fan of Pratt's measure. But in the Bluegrass State, the legislature can override a governor's veto with a majority vote of lawmakers in each chamber. The Republicans control the Senate 31-7 and the House 78-20 with two vacant seats.
"The disorienting fact about the 21st century is that, even as the calendar moves forward, actual social and political reality is in a state of regression," Jeet Heer wrote in The Nation. "Evils that were once thought long-vanquished are returning with a vengeance....Child labor now has to be added to this list of resurgent horrors," especially for immigrant children, who are widely and brutally victimized by employers.
Fraser similarly wrote, "child labor is making a comeback with a vengeance. A striking number of lawmakers are undertaking concerted efforts to weaken or repeal statutes that have long prevented (or at least seriously inhibited) the possibility of exploiting children."
Lawmakers seeking to rewrite child labor laws may claim that their aim is to get kids off the duffs, learn responsibility and make a little money. But the real goal of these politicians is boosting profits for the business owners (many of whom help bankroll the pols) by providing them more low wage workers. "American 'founding father' Alexander Hamilton’s 1791 Report on Manufacturing noted that children 'who would otherwise be idle' could instead become a source of cheap labor," Fraser wrote. "And such claims that working at an early age warded off the social dangers of 'idleness and degeneracy' remained a fixture of elite ideology well into the modern era."
By the mid-20th century, the country had begun to turn against child labor, with unions leading the way. "The insurgent labor movement of the 1930s loathed the very idea of child labor," Fraser wrote. "Unionized plants and whole industries were no-go zones for capitalists looking to exploit children. And in 1938, with the support of organized labor, President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal administration finally passed the Fair Labor Standards Act which, at least in theory, put an end to child labor (although it exempted the agricultural sector in which such a workforce remained commonplace)."
FDR's "New Deal transformed the national zeitgeist," according to Fraser. "A sense of economic egalitarianism, a newfound respect for the working class, and a bottomless suspicion of the corporate caste made child labor seem particularly repulsive. In addition, the New Deal ushered in a long era of prosperity, including rising standards of living for millions of working people who no longer needed the labor of their children to make ends meet."
Thus, Fraser wrote, "It’s all the more astonishing...to discover that a plague, once thought banished, lives again."
Just as organized labor fought for state and federal child labor laws in the last century, unions are uniting in opposition to "unscrupulous employers and state governments across the country...trying to take us back to the dark ages – and it is crucial for union members to stand our ground," says the SMART website. “These attacks on our children — and on the progress that past generations fought for tooth and nail — demonstrate just how low anti-labor forces will go in this country, and it is our duty as workers and members of the labor movement to fight against them,” said SMART General President Michael Coleman.
Meanwhile, Kentucky unions are hoping for a large turnout in Frankfort on Wednesday. Kentucky State AFL-CIO President Dustin Reinstedler said some lawmakers are "drunk with power." "It's time we sober them up," said Jeff Wiggins, state AFL-CIO secretary-treasurer.