It's disappointing to see the ongoing interest in rolling back laws aimed at protecting minors in the workplace.
I wrote about this topic last year, warning hoteliers that several states were loosening, or at least attempting to loosen, laws to make it easier for minors to get jobs. On its face, that doesn't sound bad, but it opens up the possibility of exploitation and exposure to hazardous conditions.
The latest one just makes me angry.
The Times-Picayune in New Orleans reports that a Louisiana House committee voted in April on a proposed bill that would repeal a state law that requires employers to give their minor employees a meal break.
The sponsor of the bill, state Rep. Roger Wilder, is the owner of Smoothie King franchises across the South. The Times-Picayune reports he filed the bill partly because minors want to work without having to take lunch breaks, and he even questioned why Louisiana has this requirement when other states, such as Mississippi, don't.
“The wording is ‘We’re here to harm children.’ Give me a break," he said in response to criticism of the bill. "These are young adults.”
Couple of notes here.
Firstly, the term young adult is a curious one. It covers a pretty wide age range, doesn't it? It could mean someone who is in their later teens through their early 20s, so it's a non-legal term grouping together people who are legally considered adults or minors.
Secondly, Louisiana law allows minors as young as 12 to work. Granted, there are greater restrictions in place for those who are 12 and 13 as compared to the older age groups, such as these teenagers' parents or legal guardians must be an owner or partner in the business where they're employed.
Regardless, those in their early teens are not young adults, and this bill doesn't make any exceptions for any age. It simply repeals the law currently in place that requires at least a 30-minute period for meals when a minor works for any five-hour period. It even says if the break is actually at least 20 minutes, the difference between the actual break time and the required 30 minutes is considered de minimis, meaning too trivial to consider.
The current law requiring 30 minutes for a meal break during five hours of work — but actually, if you only get more than 20, it's still totally cool — is too onerous a requirement?
For context, five hours is 300 minutes. A 21-minute break is 7% of that work period. Thirty minutes is 10%.
I've got a 13-year-old at home. He's quite frequently hungry, even after eating sometimes. I expect that appetite only to grow. Now, that's just a sample size of one here, but I'm pretty sure that's a common behavior among teens as they're actively growing into adults. Skipping a meal during a five-hour work shift would likely be a hard sell.
I'm not a huge fan of slippery slope arguments because I think they're overused, but it seems fitting in this scenario. The more workplace protections and rights for minors that get weakened, or outright removed, just set the stage for the next one.
For that column I wrote last year, I spoke with Andria Ryan, a partner at Fisher Phillips who specializes in labor and employment law. She said that minor employees are vulnerable and should be treated as such.
“They need to be watched over, and we need to pay attention to what they’re saying and doing and who’s talking to them and who’s looking at them funny,” she said. “It’s a little paternalistic, I guess, but so be it. They’re minors.”
Most people get their first job while they're teenagers. It's their introduction into the workplace, so they won't know any better. While some are good at it, others may not be comfortable speaking up for themselves if something's going wrong or if they're hurt or being mistreated by another employee or customer. The adults involved are the ones who are supposed to guide them and protect them.
In this case, there's a proposed change to a law that significantly affects them, and who knows how many of them actually know about it, so they can't speak up for themselves here.
I don't know what will happen to this bill. Maybe it'll fizzle out, or maybe it'll be amended in some way. Maybe it'll go through as is. Maybe other states will try to do something similar.
I know that just because there isn't a law affording meal breaks for any employees doesn't mean no company gives a meal break. There are plenty of states without meal break laws in place for adults but companies still have such breaks in their policies.
But the issue here is there's one on the books in Louisiana, and it's hard to understand the reasoning behind trying to take it off.
The sponsor said critics think its goal is to harm children, but I don't think that's the case. The goal is to make life a little bit easier for their employers — at the expense of the teens working for them.
You can reach me at bwroten@hotelnewsnow.com as well as LinkedIn.
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