Let kids be kids and leave child labor laws alone | Editorial
Is a 16-year-old a child or an adult?
That’s a debatable question only in the Florida Legislature, where the bottom-line demands of business interests are more important than the health and well-being of our kids. The people who write our state laws claim they are pro-family — until it collides with profit and greed. That’s the bottom line.
Their answer to the question is that a 16-year-old is an adult, period.
That is the tortured pretext for loosening Florida child labor laws so that 16-year-olds can legally work all-night shifts, without breaks, even on school nights. Under current law, 16- and 17-year-olds are prohibited from working after 11 p.m. or before 6:30 a.m., or more than eight hours on school nights, or more than 30 hours a week, and they must have a break of 30 minutes every four hours.
All those limits would disappear under a bill awaiting action in Tallahassee.
“Sixteen and 17-year-olds are not children. They are driving,” asserted state Rep. Linda Chaney, R-St. Pete Beach, who’s sponsoring the child labor bill (HB 49) in the Florida House.
Who’s behind this?
Chaney is pushing the agenda of Florida’s influential hotel and restaurant industry, whose statewide trade group, the Florida Restaurant and Lodging Association (FRLA), is a driving force behind this bad idea. Testifying before a House subcommittee, a lobbyist for FRLA called the new law “desperately needed.”
Hotels and restaurants can’t keep enough employees to adequately staff their operations, a situation made worse by the acute shortage of affordable housing.
Those businesses will not admit that they refuse to pay their workers a living wage, so their solution is to expand the work force by exploiting teenagers instead. Wages in the hospitality industry have risen, but the industry strongly opposed the 2020 ballot initiative that will increase Florida’s minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2026.
Supporters of changing the law argue that Florida’s child labor laws are too restrictive and that the change aligns with both federal law and laws in 24 other states.
So, all of a sudden, Florida wants to emulate the federal government. That argument would hold more weight if Gov. Ron DeSantis and his allies in the Legislature weren’t undermining the feds at every turn — and even refusing to accept hundreds of millions of dollars in federal money, most recently to make homes more energy efficient.
Eleven to 7 at 7-Eleven
Having a strong work ethic builds self-esteem. It is very important that young people learn the value of work and the virtues of showing up on time, following orders and accepting responsibility. But that should not include forcing 16-year-olds to work all-night shifts at gas stations or convenience stores in dangerous neighborhoods.
Weakening child labor protections state by state is part of a national movement, The Washington Post has reported. It is partly funded by ultra-right billionaire Dick Uihlein, whose think tank, the Foundation for Government Accountability, based in Naples, wrote the first draft of Chaney’s bill, according to the investigative news site Seeking Rents. FGA is also a fierce opponent of the expansion of Medicaid.
Uihlein, an election denier and major DeSantis campaign contributor, founded the shipping supply giant Uline.
The weakening of Florida child labor laws cleared a House subcommittee easily on Dec. 19 as all 10 Republicans present voted yes and all five Democrats voted no. The Democrats were Reps. Joe Casello, D-Boynton Beach; Anna Eskamani, D-Orlando; Ashley Gantt, D-Miami; Susan Valdes, D-Tampa; and Angie Nixon, D-Jacksonville.
Unable to stop this bad idea, Democrats did the next best thing. They offered a variety of amendments to make it more consumer-friendly, but Republicans voted them down on party lines.
The GOP majority even refused to consider an amendment that would require businesses that employ minors to keep records of sexual harassment incidents and to let parents see them.
Eskamani tried a different kind of logic. If 16- and 17-year-olds are considered adults in the workplace, she said, then they should not require parental consent to have an abortion.
“They’re mature enough to work overtime at a 7-Eleven past midnight on a school night, but they’re not mature enough to decide whether or not to parent,” Eskamani argued.
Republicans quickly rejected that amendment, too. The sponsor, Chaney, promotes her bill as “youth worker freedom.” That’s just more political spin in Tallahassee. It’s the Cheap Labor Act of 2024, and it will exploit our kids.
The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writer Martin Dyckman and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson. Editorials are the opinion of the Board and written by one of its members or a designee. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.