Business gets GOP to OK child labor

Kris Kristofferson’s song “Bobby McGee,” best known as sung by Janis Joplin, has the line “Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose.”

This Independence Day, Republicans emboldened by the U.S. House’s Right-wing Freedom Caucus are ensuring children could increasingly face losing their health and education and who knows what else.

Taking effect July 1 in Iowa is the latest attack on labor in general and kids in particular.

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds on May 26 signed a bill to eliminate many child-labor protections – creating a state law that violates federal statutes, too.

U.S. Solicitor of Labor Seema Nanda said the legislation “appears to be inconsistent with federal child-labor law in several respects.”

The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) “establishes federal standards with respect to child labor, and states cannot nullify federal requirements by enacting less protective standards,” the agency wrote. “Therefore, if Iowa law were to conflict with the FLSA and the Department’s regulations by permitting minors to work in occupations and during or for hours that they are otherwise prohibited from working under federal law, those state law provisions would be inconsistent with FLSA.”

Nanda added that the U.S. Department of Labor – which has current investigations of breaking child-labor laws numbering about 600 – “will continue to closely monitor the status of child-labor laws in Iowa and their potential ramifications for federal child labor law enforcement.”

Despite such clear warning, Republican lawmakers continue to use political power to prioritize business interests and force their beliefs on others.

In Iowa and nine other states (Arkansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Ohio, South Dakota and Tennessee) business has lobbied for the dramatic changes.

“It helps fill a need,” Reynolds told Iowa Public Radio, meaning the jobs that employers can’t fill because of low wages, unsafe working conditions and lousy management.

So Iowa’s version will let young teens work later and longer, work in jobs currently prohibited (in meat freezers, serving liquor, selling fireworks, working in demolition and excavating, for instance).

Only Republicans voted for Iowa’s measure, and two Republicans joined all Democrats in opposing the legislation.

The GOP is not just interfering with businesses that don’t kowtow to extremist conservatives’ agenda (from Disney to everyday retailers who during the pandemic asked workers and customers to show proof of vaccinations). They’re eager to limit regular Americans’ free expression and education.

“I don’t think it is a coincidence at all that the same groups that we are seeing attempt to roll back child-labor laws are also the same groups that are part of this relentless attack on public education and, more broadly, public institutions,” said Nina Mast, a state economic analyst with the Economic Policy Institute. “These goals are part of the Right-wing agenda that’s attempting to dismantle policies in place to regulate labor, institutions in place to serve the public and educate our children.”

Thus harming education, such efforts apparently show that the GOP values cheap labor more than well-rounded adults.

The nation dealt with child labor in the early 20^th century, when it became a social crisis. In 1911, for example, statistics showed some 2 million children were working – many in 12-hour days.

“Textbooks, ever since the middle of the 20th century, have been applauding the reform movement that gradually put an end to the child-labor horrors that ran widespread throughout the early Industrial Age,” comments Sam Pizzigati of the Institute for Policy Studies. “Now those horrors, here in the 21st century, are reappearing.”

Such backward actions are just another way to let employers break federal law. Children will pay the price.