Republicans are trying to exploit child labor laws! Longer hours and MUCH lower pay! What say you?
Maine State Rep. David Burns is the latest of many Republican lawmakersconcerned that employers aren’t allowed to do enough to exploit child workers:
LD 1346 suggests several significant changes to Maine’s child labor law, most notably a 180-day period during which workers under age 20 would earn $5.25 an hour.The state’s current minimum wage is $7.50 an hour.
Rep. David Burns, R-Whiting, is sponsoring the bill, which also would eliminate the maximum number of hours a minor over 16 can work during school days.
Burns’ bill is particularly insidious, because it directly encourages employers to hire children or teenagers instead of adult workers. Because workers under 20 could be paid less than adults under this GOP proposal, minimum wage workers throughout Maine would likely receive a pink slip as their twentieth birthday present so that their boss could replace them with someone younger and cheaper.
And Burns is just one of many prominent Republicans who believe that America’s robust protections against the exploitation of children are wrongheaded:
- Maine State Sen. Debra Plowman (R) introduced a separate bill that would extend the number of hours employers can require a minor to work. Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R) backs this proposal.
- Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) delivered a lengthy lecture where he claimed that federal child labor laws violate the Constitution. His Republican colleagues in the Senate rewarded him with a seat on the Senate Judiciary Committee — the committee with jurisdiction over constitutional questions.
- Missouri State Sen. Jane Cunningham (R) introduced a bill which would “eliminate[] the prohibition on employment of children under age fourteen. Restrictions on the number of hours and restrictions on when a child may work during the day are also removed.”
- Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s (R) most recent brief attacking the Affordable Care Act relies heavily on a discredited Supreme Court decision striking down a federal child labor law that was overruled decades ago.
- Judges Roger Vinson and Henry Hudson, the two outlier judges who struck down the ACA, also relied heavily on this discredited anti-child labor decision in their decisions.
Republicans’ contempt for workers is hardly news. GOP governors throughout the country have declared war on collective bargaining, and the national minimum wage remained stagnant for nearly a decade the last time Republicans controlled Congress. Nevertheless, the GOP’s increasingly widespread assaults on child labor laws is a significant escalation from their longstanding war on adult workers.
If I was running the Huffington Post I'd pay them the same amount that Ariana is though. I'd be paying them what they're worth.
http://www.disinfo.com/2011/0...
Unpaid Huffington Post Writers May Strike Following $315 Million Sale To AOLPosted by JacobSloan on March 23, 2011
The progressive views of leading liberal website the Huffington Post apparently stop at the office door. When your company is worth $315 million, it’s hard to make excuses for not paying your writers, and so the Newspaper Guild is urging the site’s unpaid bloggers to strike, in a controversy that has gone oddly undermentioned in the left-wing blogosphere. The Wrap reports:
Arianna Huffington scoffed at a group of unpaid Huffington Post contributors that announced on Wednesday they would stop contributing content to the site, weeks after its $315 million sale to AOL was announced.
“The idea of going on strike when no one really notices,” Huffington said. “Go ahead, go on strike.”
The controversy arose after writers for the websites ArtScene and Visual Art Source , which had been contributing content to the Huffington Post for free since 2010, refuse to contribute additional material to the site unless they got paid. They are as...
http://www.disinfo.com/2011/0...
Unpaid Huffington Post Writers May Strike Following $315 Million Sale To AOLPosted by JacobSloan on March 23, 2011
The progressive views of leading liberal website the Huffington Post apparently stop at the office door. When your company is worth $315 million, it’s hard to make excuses for not paying your writers, and so the Newspaper Guild is urging the site’s unpaid bloggers to strike, in a controversy that has gone oddly undermentioned in the left-wing blogosphere. The Wrap reports:
Arianna Huffington scoffed at a group of unpaid Huffington Post contributors that announced on Wednesday they would stop contributing content to the site, weeks after its $315 million sale to AOL was announced.
“The idea of going on strike when no one really notices,” Huffington said. “Go ahead, go on strike.”
The controversy arose after writers for the websites ArtScene and Visual Art Source , which had been contributing content to the Huffington Post for free since 2010, refuse to contribute additional material to the site unless they got paid. They are asking for a pay schedule and requesting that promotional material no longer be published alongside editorial content.
How many Maine Teenagers complained about the proposed Maine Law.
Sorry.. I just don't see how you extrapolated that one.
Ariana Huffington calls families that drive SUV's Pigs yet flits around the world on private jets. Now that she has made over 300 million dollars off the sweat of her writer's brows she's telling the writers tough $hit. Your turn of the last century photo showing children in sweat shop conditions was sensationalist and no decent person would support that. I don't see the parrallel between a summer job for a teen that needs to make payments on his or her new car as being tantamount to sweat shop conditions.
How's that for a sensational headline?
I remember summer jobs growing up gave me money to do things I otherwise would not have had the means to do. My father did more grueling work around the farm as a kid (unpaid) than I have ever had to do on a job. Considering that manufacturing jobs make up less than 15% GDP, I think it's unlikely kids are going to risk being sucked into the metal press or trapped in the coal mine any time soon. ...More likely, they'll get a papercut alphabetizing legal documents, or get a parched throat from prolonged telemarketing.
By trying to keep all the power centralized with the Feds (which is what all of your cited examples involve) you end up creating more obstacles for teens (especially working class teens or those with parents who are unemployed) to gain legitimate employment. I would imagine that many will just work for cash, or spend their time making real money in more unsavory markets.
Right now they have to not only compete in an economy where businesses are outsourcing jobs by the ton reducing the work available but the Gov of this state whats them to compete with children being paid lower wages for the same job.
The sad part is, adults have had to settle for jobs that they're wildly overqualified for. So who gets shafted? Low skilled laborers, uneducated minorities, and teenagers trying to make gas money to hang with their friends.
Republicans should, rightly, be fighting for the Federal government to get their nose out of local state issues. In Idaho they still let kids out of school for a week or so to harvest potatoes. Gasp! Call Eric Holder... Oh wait, people (adolescents & adult) actually enjoy the time they spend working with their families and taking part in a tradition that actually benefits their families financially. You can't even get a legitimate paper route anymore.... Seriously, how many people have a kid on a bike deliver the newspaper? I know, I know... "What's a newspaper"... ; )
So let me get this straight you think it is ok for major employers who have made record profits in the last 2-3 quaters to over work their employees because they can?
"Labour was the first price, the original purchase - money that was paid for all things. It was not by gold or by silver, but by labour, that all wealth of the world was originally purchased." - Adam Smith
Sorry but I dont feel the worker should have to roll over so the man at the top can make a bigger profit margin. Without the labor NO profits are made.
We shoud not have to conceede our liberty based on who can hire or fire us.
Doing more with less doesn't mean what it used to. We're not shoveling more coal into the steam-shovel boiler. It means we're not taking the big risks we used to. We're not tossing marketing dollars at high-production print materials, because we can deliver messaging better through digital media. We're not traveling as much. We're hiring freelancers on a project basis, versus building up internal services. We've regretfully had to lay off redundant positions, and streamlined our workflows as much as possible.
All of that said, our economy is dominated by service industries. We're not talking about people getting laid off who only know how to operate one machine, or assemble one type of widget. Those positions are flourishing in freer markets that have encouraged industrial production by hook or by crook... Places like China who, coincidentally, also own most of the gold and silver that may or may not back the "wealth of the world".
I don't think I can admire a workplace like China where commiting suicide is how you get time off.
This post is about where the locus of control for businesses should lie (with a centralized government that paints everything with a broad equalizing stroke - or - with local state-made decisions that can tailor decisions for their unique set of circumstances).
If you're for the Federal government pulling the strings, then you are for fewer jobs and less opportunity for the American citizens that make up the small businesses and large corporations who fuel domestic growth.
I read a sad OpEd piece in the Times this weekend talking about how universities and corporations should frown on unpaid internships. To me, we've successfully frowned practical vocational training into the gutter, and now we encourage people, who could otherwise be making money shortly after they graduate, to accumulate crippling debts that don't guarantee increased wages.
Let's call an unpaid internship what it is - an apprenticeship.
And for all the support of Union organizing, lets hold those union leaders accountable who have failed to offer their members practical training in an evolving economy... I have family members who have been part of a union my whole life who can't use a computer. If you're not pro-personal-accountability and adaptability, then you should at least be pro-opportunity - and without simple skills you have less and less of both.
Next stop, child mercenary warriors.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Oh and welcome to the 21st century, Rip. We're just trying to introduce our youths to the workforce where they can build a foundation for an honest law abiding career instead of being sucked into a life of crime and welfare dependency. Nothing to do with exploitation. Just trying to repair the damage to our civilization caused by liberal policies.