davenewworld_2/Twitter
October 25, 2021, 12:59 pm
In the midst of what some are calling a “labor shortage” and what others are calling a “living wage shortage,” the state Senate of Wisconsin has voted to extend allowed working hours for teenagers under the age of 16 if they work for a business small enough to dodge the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The federal legislation prevents children under 16 from working too early in the morning and too late at night, with specific hours changing based on what time of the year it is in an attempt to get the kids home before dark.
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Wisconsin Senate Bill 332, however, says that 14 and 15-year-olds can start work as early as 6 am and stay until 9:30 pm on school nights, a half-hour past the previous limit during summer months, or until 11 pm if there’s no school the next day. Some who have studied history are decrying this bill as undercutting workers’ efforts to get fair pay, benefits, and decent treatment by dragging the nation back toward a time when child labor was widely allowed, to horrifying results.
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Wisconsin’s standard minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, or $2.33 an hour for tipped employees.
“Kids should be doing their homework, being in school instead of working more hours,” said Wisconsin Senator Bob Wirch, Democrat. “So I oppose this bill. And I think it sends us in the wrong direction.”
Wirch further noted that “there’s going to be curfew violations if [employers] follow this bill, working until 11 o’clock.” He was reportedly the only senator to actually say something one way another about the bill before Senate president Chris Kapenga, a Republican, called a voice vote in which he barely allowed the “no” voters to get their mouths aligned before declaring the bill had been approved.
The bill will now advance to the Assembly as soon as next week.
Wisconsin Republicans in favor of the bill argued that the current law restricting child labor “hamstrings” owners of restaurants and golf courses by not letting them work their adolescent employees late into the night or make them get up before six in the morning to work a couple of hours before school. One capitalist couple, who own multiple ice cream shops and a mini-golf course, complained that the current law “puts a burden on the remaining teens we employ as they bear the brunt of the work.”
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Sure, it’s the law limiting child exploitation, not their refusal to hire more adult workers, that is causing their teenage workers to suffer. People like this often target teens for employment as they can get away with paying less and know that underage children are less likely to understand their rights or stand up to abuse.
The bill is being supported and bankrolled by your usual business associations full of notoriously exploitative workplaces, such as restaurants and grocery stores, while being opposed by human and labor rights groups. Stephanie Bloomingdale, president of the Wisconsin AFL-CIO, condemned the bill as creating separate standards for some kids just because they work at a small business as though that somehow makes them less worthy of their rights.
“If this bill passes, then there will be one set of rules for children who work at employers that fall under the FLSA and another set of rules for children who work at employers that do not fall under the FLSA,” she said while addressing the bill in September. “All of Wisconsin’s 14 and 15-year-old children are owed the same level of protection that our state has provided over the past 100 years.”
On Twitter, many on the political left are condemning the bill simply on the grounds that child labor is bad.
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Anything except raising wages for adults. Why don’t we just lift the age minimum all together?
— House of Black Style
(@hseofblackstyle) October 23, 2021
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*First Published: October 25, 2021, 12:59 pm
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