Louisiana lawmakers vote to remove lunch breaks for child workers, cut unemployment benefits

Stopthatgirl7@lemmy.world to News@lemmy.world – 271 points – Louisiana lawmakers vote to remove lunch breaks for child workers, cut unemployment benefits
nola.com

A Louisiana House committee voted Thursday to repeal a law requiring employers to give child workers lunch breaks and to cut unemployment benefits — part of a push by Republicans to remove constraints on employers and reduce aid for injured and unemployed workers.

The House Labor and Industrial Relations panel advanced the child labor legislation, House Bill 156, along with House Bill 119, which would slash the amount of time for which people can collect unemployment aid. A third bill the committee approved, House Bill 529, would change how workers' compensation wages are calculated in ways that could reduce benefits received by some injured laborers.

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First-term state Rep. Roger Wilder, R-Denham Springs, who sponsored the child labor measure and owns Smoothie King franchises across the Deep South, said he filed the bill in part because children want to work without having to take lunch breaks. He questioned why Louisiana has the requirement while other states where he owns Smoothie King locations, such as Mississippi, don't have them, and criticized people who have questioned the bill's purpose.
“The wording is ‘We’re here to harm children.’ Give me a break," he said. "These are young adults.”

O_O

Edit: you heard it here first, one day there will be a news article about this guy flirting with underage workers (possibly something darker)

So ... they're here to harm young adults? How is that better?

I love how when they don't want lunch breaks they're practically adults so they shouldn't need them. But when they want life changing (life saving) medical care, suddenly they're kids that need protecting.

The cruelty is the point. At this point, voting republican in the US is equal to voting for German Nazis in 1933, when they were still working towards a totalitarian terror state.

When I was a kid I worked at a full service gas station. We didn’t get lunch breaks, or any sort of breaks, and I didn’t know that’s how things were supposed to work until I became an adult and started to work construction.

This law absolutely will be used to take advantage of kids, because companies do not give one single fuck about children and kids don’t know any better.

Yikes, add a non compete to this and it's basically slavery conditions

without workers the smoothies dont get made.

As US citizens, we should praise the Lord for the privilege of giving our time to our employers. I think that workers who accept pay are greedy, and if you do manage to receive pay, after donating it to your landlord, the rest should go to the church. Child rape trials and relocating sex offenders can get quite expensive. Help a local church! /s

Once again, I feel the need to point out that the child labor issue is an immigration issue and that is what informs their cruelty.

https://www.npr.org/2023/05/04/1173697113/immigrant-child-labor-crisis

Not that they don't hate children too, they just especially hate immigrant children.

Definitely, but this is foremost about abusing immigrant child labor.

Sometimes american news read like the funny news from a dystopic victorian city builder tycoon

They want their slaves back. Don't dare dream otherwise. They want slaves.

They're also introducing new regulations that require regular maintenance to keep the thumbscrew-tightening machines in proper working order. In the next session, they'll be deciding whether to allow employers to hit babies in the face with bats.