As migrants flee, Florida GOP pushes to ease child labor laws to deal with shortage of workers

Florida is experiencing a extreme labor scarcity. It impacts the important thing hospitality sector, which is having issues filling sometimes low-paying jobs at eating places, lodges, and theme parks. Farmers are having issue discovering employees to select crops. And there aren’t sufficient building employees to wash up and rebuild after hurricanes strike. 

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce reported that, as of August 2023, there are solely 53 employees for each 100 open jobs within the Sunshine State. However Gov. Ron DeSantis has made clear that migrants are unwelcome in Florida. And to take care of the labor scarcity, Florida Republicans have give you a  new thought—easing baby labor legal guidelines for 16- and 17-year-olds. 

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The GOP state consultant who launched laws to loosen work laws for youngsters selected to switch the time period “baby labor.”

”This invoice shouldn’t be about youngsters,” state Rep. Linda Chaney informed her colleagues at a committee listening to on Wednesday. “This invoice is about 16- and 17-year-olds. These are youth employees which might be driving cars. These usually are not youngsters.”

Right here’s how the Orlando Weekly described the invoice launched by Chaney:

Backed by trade teams representing restaurant and resort homeowners, the proposed invoice would do away with state tips on when 16- and 17-year-olds can work and would restrict native governments’ capability to enact stronger laws of their communities.

The invoice, as an illustration, would make it authorized for employers to place older teenagers to work on in a single day shifts, even when they’ve faculty the following day.

At the moment, below Florida regulation, it’s unlawful for employers to work minors below 18 greater than 30 hours per week through the faculty 12 months, put them to work throughout faculty hours, put them to work in a single day (between 11 p.m. to six:30 a.m.) or schedule older teenagers to work greater than six days in a row.

Nikki Fried, the chair of the Florida Democratic Celebration, opposed the proposal, saying that “the reply isn’t altering the legal guidelines and making it extra harmful.”

“These children want to be specializing in graduating. What helps the financial system is getting them out of colleges and getting them into skilled careers,“ she stated. “And if they’re spending a lot time feeling that they should work extra hours or are in a scenario the place they’re, it’s distracting them from on a regular basis faculty. That’s why there are guidelines in place and this isn’t the reply to what the Republicans have performed to our financial system in relation to our migrant work drive. There are higher options and this isn’t it.”

Clearly, one key issue accounting for the labor scarcity is the sturdy financial system, which the GOP continues to insist is failing below President Joe Biden. Florida’s unemployment price is 2.8%, decrease than the nationwide common of three.9%, in line with the Miami Herald. 

However there’s additionally Florida’s draconian immigration insurance policies. In September 2022, DeSantis pulled a merciless political stunt by flying a number of dozen lately arrived migrants from Texas to Martha’s Winery, an island off the Massachusetts coast the place former President Barack Obama has a summer time house. Final 12 months, the state legislature allotted $12 million for the transport of “unlawful immigrants.” 

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In Might, DeSantis boasted about signing one of many strictest immigration legal guidelines within the nation. It criminalized transporting undocumented employees into the state, invalidated any U.S. authorities identification or native ID playing cards they may have, mandated hospitals that obtain Medicaid to ask about sufferers’ immigration standing, and required companies using 25 or extra individuals to confirm their employees’ authorized standing.

The end result was predictable. Enterprise homeowners reported that skilled migrant employees afraid of being focused and arrested at their workplaces started fleeing Florida for different states, whereas there weren’t sufficient new migrants coming into the state to switch them.

Florida might simply have accommodated migrants because it did for 125,000 Cubans through the 1980 Mariel boatlift. In 2021, almost half of all Venezuelan immigrants within the U.S. lived in Florida, reflecting an immigration wave that sharply escalated after Nicolas Maduro grew to become president in 2013.

However Florida Republicans usually are not about to alter a foul immigration regulation. That would contradict efforts by Republicans nationally to make use of the “border disaster” to assault Biden. And now Home and Senate Republicans are insisting that any invoice to supply help to Ukraine and Israel additionally embrace border safety measures.

So Florida Republicans are actually proposing a invoice that might get rid of laws that had been initially put in place to stop work from interfering with youngsters’s well being, security, and training. David Metellus, the director of coverage and politics on the Florida Immigrant Coalition, informed the Miami Herald that he thinks the proposed laws is a results of the cruel immigration regulation handed by the legislature earlier this 12 months. “We expect it’s not going to be benefiting the children, it’s solely going to be benefiting the companies,” Metellus stated. “It’s bailing out the Legislature for dangerous coverage as properly.”

Chaney didn’t even write the invoice she’s sponsoring herself. A employees’-rights advocacy group, Extra Good Union, uncovered paperwork by means of the Freedom of Data Act that present the textual content for the invoice was fed to her by the Naples, Florida-based Basis for Authorities Accountability, a right-wing assume tank that lobbied state legislatures throughout the nation to loosen baby labor laws.

The conservative assume tank euphemistically calls its program: “Empowering Youngsters By means of the Energy of Work.” The FGA’s greatest donor is billionaire Dick Uihlein, a serious DeSantis donor, who has additionally funded election-denial efforts and different right-wing causes.

Extra Good Union reported {that a} lobbyist for FGA’s advocacy arm responded to a July 26 e-mail from Cheney’s workplace requesting “some mannequin laws relating to youth employee freedom.” The lobbyist wrote in an Aug. 28 e-mail: “Connected is draft language on the Youth Employee Freedom subject that Rep. Chaney expressed curiosity in to FGA.” In September, Chaney filed Home Invoice 49, an almost verbatim copy of the FGA’s draft laws.

The Financial Coverage Institute, a liberal assume tank, in a report titled “Baby labor legal guidelines are below assault in states throughout the nation,” wrote: “Youngsters of households in poverty, and particularly Black, brown, and immigrant youth, stand to undergo probably the most hurt from such adjustments.”

The report, which was up to date in June 2023, added:

“Whereas federal companies are ramping up enforcement of kid labor protections in response to rising violations, trade teams are working to roll again baby labor protections through state laws.

Already in 2023, seven payments to weaken baby labor protections have been launched in six Midwestern states (Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, and South Dakota) and in Arkansas, the place a invoice repealing restrictions on work for 14- and 15-year-olds has now been signed into regulation. One invoice launched in Minnesota would enable 16- and 17-year-olds to work on building websites. Ten states have launched, thought-about, or handed laws rolling again protections for younger employees in simply the previous two years.

And now it’s Florida’s flip: On Wednesday, the Home Regulatory Reform & Financial Improvement Subcommittee superior the invoice by a 10-5 party-line vote. It nonetheless should be authorised by two different Home committees earlier than it may be delivered to the ground for a vote. No companion invoice has been launched to date within the state Senate. The following legislative session begins on Jan. 9, 2024. Republicans maintain an awesome majority in each chambers.

Looking for Rents, a web-based publication that examines the methods companies affect public coverage in Florida, reported that Chaney, who represents St. Pete Seaside, a resort space close to St. Petersburg, stated she filed the laws partly to supply extra labor for Florida’s tourism trade. “Being in a vacationer space of Florida and figuring out the wants of the hospitality trade … I felt this was a common sense invoice,” Chaney was quoted as saying by Sinking Rents.

At Wednesday’s listening to, Samantha Padgett, a consultant of the Florida Restaurant and Lodging Affiliation, spoke in favor of the invoice, the Orlando Weekly reported.

“We consider the intent [of the bill] is to not erode the significance of training, however to cut back pointless and restrictive regulation, increase out there staffing, and develop monetary and profession growth alternatives for younger Floridians,” she stated.

Chaney defended her laws, claiming that 16- and-17-year-olds “wish to work.”

“This invoice will get authorities out of their approach to decide on the trail that’s finest for them,” she stated.

However Democrats on the committee had been having none of that and peppered Chaney with questions. Democratic Rep. Anna Eskamani stated some jobs may doubtlessly be dangerous similar to working an in a single day shift at a fuel station or 7-Eleven comfort retailer. Chaney replied that the invoice leaves it up to {the teenager} and their mother and father when or the place they work. Eskamani then requested whether or not the kid has to get parental consent to take that job in the event that they’re 16 or 17. Chaney replied:  “No.”

Democrats proposed six amendments to the invoice, which had been all voted down by the Republican majority. Rep. Angie Nixon, the mom of 5 youngsters, together with a 16-year-old, proposed two of the amendments. One modification would have reestablished a state Division of Labor to assist implement baby labor regulation. Lawmakers had abolished the Division of Labor in 2002.

The second would have required companies that make use of 16- and-17-year-olds to take care of a document of office sexual harassment incidents and supply them to the teenager’s mother and father upon hiring. The Orlando Weekly wrote:

“I don’t know why anybody wouldn’t vote to make sure, once more, that our youngsters are secure and in a piece surroundings that’s free from sexual predators,” stated Nixon.

“You realize, we discuss so much about parental rights right here in Tallahassee and that is key,” she stated, referring to a speaking level steadily introduced up by Florida Republicans earlier this 12 months in protection of anti-LGBTQ+ laws.

That modification was shot down too. (Apparently the “Defend the kids” rhetoric stops in relation to children who’re on the clock.)

One other modification stated that if older teenagers are mature sufficient to work, they must also be capable of select whether or not to have an abortion with out parental consent.