GORDON LAFER Oct 31, 2013
Over the past two years, state legislators across the country have launched an unprecedented series of initiatives aimed at lowering labor standards, weakening unions, and eroding workplace protections for both union and non-union workers. This policy agenda undercuts the ability of low- and middle-wage workers, both union and non-union, to earn a decent wage.
This report provides a broad overview of the attack on wages, labor standards, and workplace protections as it has been advanced in state legislatures across the country. Specifically, the report seeks to illuminate the agenda to undermine wages and labor standards being advanced for non-union Americans in order to understand how this fits with the far better-publicized assaults on the rights of unionized employees. By documenting the similarities in how analogous bills have been advanced in multiple states, the report establishes the extent to which legislation emanates not from state officials responding to local economic conditions, but from an economic and policy agenda fueled by national corporate lobbies that aim to lower wages and labor standards across the country.
In 2011 and 2012, state legislatures undertook numerous efforts to undermine wages and labor standards:
- Four states passed laws restricting the minimum wage, four lifted restrictions on child labor, and 16 imposed new limits on benefits for the unemployed.
- States also passed laws stripping workers of overtime rights, repealing or restricting rights to sick leave, undermining workplace safety protections, and making it harder to sue one’s employer for race or sex discrimination.
- Legislation has been pursued making it harder for employees to recover unpaid wages (i.e., wage theft) and banning local cities and counties from establishing minimum wages or rights to sick leave.
- For the 93 percent of private-sector employees who have no union contract, laws on matters such as wages and sick time define employment standards and rights on the job. Thus, this agenda to undermine wages and working conditions is aimed primarily at non-union, private-sector employees.
These efforts provide important context for the much-better-publicized moves to undermine public employee unions. By far the most galvanizing and most widely reported legislative battle of the past two years was Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s “budget repair bill” that, in early 2011, largely eliminated collective bargaining rights for the state’s 175,000 public employees.1 Following this, in 2011 and 2012:
- Fifteen states passed laws restricting public employees’ collective bargaining rights or ability to collect “fair share” dues through payroll deductions.2
- Nineteen states introduced “right-to-work” bills, and “right-to-work” laws affecting private-sector collective bargaining agreements were enacted in Michigan and Indiana.
Child labor
In the debates among the 2012 Republican presidential candidates, Newt Gingrich famously criticized child labor laws as “stupid,” and specifically called for schools to replace unionized custodians with lower-wage student employees.189
Idaho was the first state to make Gingrich’s vision reality when it adopted a law allowing kids as young as 12 to be employed for up to 10 hours per week cleaning and performing other manual labor around their schools. In the Meridian district—which championed the new law—school district spokesman Eric Exline touted the program as a means of saving money by avoiding having to hire adults, and of teaching middle school students that “you have to be on time [and] you have to do what you’re asked, what your supervisor is telling you.”190
Wisconsin focused on older students—age 16 and over—but enacted much more sweeping legislation, abolishing all restrictions on the number of hours minors are permitted to work during the school year. Previously, 16- and 17-year-olds could not work more than five hours a day on school days, more than 26 hours per week during the school year, and more than six days in a row. Despite substantial evidence that increased workloads make it more difficult for students to concentrate in school, the new law frees 16- and 17-year-olds to work an unlimited number of hours per week, seven days a week, throughout the school year.191 The bill’s passage was celebrated by the Wisconsin Grocery Association, which explained that grocers are not “trying to overwork these kids or create a sweatshop,” but “want to give kids that great first opportunity you get in a grocery store.”192
Maine followed in Wisconsin’s footsteps, if not going quite so far. The legislature first considered the “Enhance Access to the Workplace for Minors” Act, which would have created a subminimum wage of $5.25 for anyone under 20 years of age and lifted all restrictions on the number of hours teenagers can work; the bill’s author argued that many youth “have no experience, and perhaps no work ethic, and don’t merit the minimum wage until they learn a job.”193 This bill, however, proved too extreme even for Maine’s conservative legislature.194 Instead, legislators adopted a less ambitious law that—with the strong support of the Maine Restaurant Association—expands the number of hours high school students can work from four to six per school day and from 20 to 24 per school week.195 One of the bill’s sponsors explained that students “could get home from school at 3:00 and could work from 4:00–9:00. They’d still have plenty of time for homework. Most of these kids are generally up well past 10:00. They could work a 3:00–9:00 shift.”196 Indeed, this legislator suggested that the very concept of child labor codes might be objectionable. “Kids have parents,” insisted Rep. Bruce Bickford. “It’s not up to the government to regulate everybody’s life and lifestyle. Take the government away. Let the parents take care of their kids.”197
Michigan likewise increased, from 15 to 24, the number of hours students may work during a school week.198 The bill, sponsored by the House majority leader, was championed by a wide range of business lobbies and low-wage employers’ associations, including the Chamber of Commerce, Small Business Association, NFIB, Grocers Association, Lodging and Tourism Association, Licensed Beverage Association, and Association of Home Builders.199 Perhaps most outspoken was the Michigan Restaurant Association which, despite a statewide unemployment rate of 10.6 percent, told legislators that “many restaurants cannot find enough adult labor to fill available positions” and need the teenagers in order to stay afloat.200
While Idaho, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Maine are the only states to have actually passed legislation rolling back child labor protections in the past two years, similar proposals were advanced in a variety of other states, including Ohio, Utah, Minnesota, and Missouri, where State Sen. Jane Cunningham proposed allowing children of any age to work unlimited hours, and removing the state’s authority to inspect children’s working conditions.201 Thus, the corporate lobbies seeking to undermine collective bargaining and unions’ political strength are also actively working to promote longer work hours for youth, and to use this labor force to undermine wage standards for adult employees. Unsurprisingly, like the construction industry, many of those advocating for expanded youth work hours—including the Restaurant Association, Hotel and Lodging Association, and Association of Home Builders—are also urging the federal government to allow them to import increased numbers of low-wage guestworkers.202
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