#Iowa Federation of Labor

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Labor advocates on Tuesday decried a business-backed bill introduced by Republican state lawmakers in Iowa that would roll back child labor laws so that teens as young as 14 could work in previously prohibited jobs including mining, logging, and animal slaughtering—a proposal one union president called dangerous and "just crazy."

Senate File 167, introduced by state Sen. Jason Schultz (R-6) would expand job options available to teens—including letting children as young as 14 work in freezers and meat coolers and loading and unloading light tools, under certain conditions.

Teens under 18 would still be generally barred from employment in fields including mining, logging, demolition, and meatpacking, and from operating potentially dangerous machinery and equipment including circular saws, guillotine shears, and punching machines.

However, the Des Moines Register reports the proposed law contains "an entirely new section" that "would allow the Iowa Workforce Development and state Department of Education heads to make exceptions to any of the prohibited jobs for teens 14-17 'participating in work-based learning or a school or employer-administered, work-related program.'"

The proposed bill—which comes amid an ongoing labor shortage in Iowa—also expands the hours teens may work, and shields businesses from liability if a minor employee is sickened, injured, or killed as a result of a company's negligence.

"This is just crazy," Charlie Wishman, president of the Iowa Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, told the Des Moines Register. "A kid can still lose an arm in a work-based learning program."

Wishman said the bill will gut more than a century of child labor protections, many of which were enacted in an era when "children were hurt and killed" on the job.

"The idea of putting children into work activities that could be dangerous is something that is not only irresponsible but reprehensible," Wishman added.

Iowa state Sen. Claire Celsi (D-16) called the proposed legislation "another sign that the labor market in Iowa is in big trouble."

"Businesses are so desperate to hire warm bodies that they want politicians to bend child labor laws (and eliminate corporate liability)," she wrote on Twitter.

State Sen. Nate Boulton (D-20), an attorney specializing in labor law, described the bill as "offensive."

"Putting children at risk, and creating immunity for that risk, is not acceptable," he told Iowa Starting Line.

As in other states, child labor violations are not uncommon in Iowa, with immigrant minors particularly susceptible to exploitation.

"These efforts to roll back child labor laws overlap with the conservative changes to school curriculum," tweeted education podcaster and author Jennifer Berkshire. "The through line is an effort to teach kids that free enterprise rules and that the boss is king."

"Instead of raising the minimum wage and paying adults more or funding a social safety net, Iowa would rather bring back child labor," author Lyz Lenz tweeted.

[batboyblog]

Things the Biden-Harris Administration Did This Week #32

August 30-September 6 2024.

President Biden announced $7.3 billion in clean energy investment for rural communities. This marks the largest investment in rural electrification since the New Deal. The money will go to 16 rural electric cooperatives across 23 states Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, Nevada, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Texas, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. Together they will be able to generate 10 gigawatts of clean energy, enough to power 5 million households about 20% of America's rural population. This clean energy will reduce greenhouse emissions by 43.7 million tons a year, equivalent to removing more than 10 million cars off the road every year.

The Biden-Harris Administration announced a historic 10th offshore wind project. The latest project approved for the Atlantic coast of Maryland will generate 2,200 megawatts of clean, reliable renewable energy to power 770,000 homes. All together the 10 offshore wind projects approved by the Biden-Harris Administration will generation 15 gigawatts, enough to power 5.25 million homes. This is half way to the Administration's goal of 30 gigawatts of clean offshore wind power by 2030.

President Biden signed an Executive Order aimed at supporting and expanding unions. Called the "Good Jobs EO" the order will direct all federal agencies to take steps to recognize unions, to not interfere with the formation of unions and reach labor agreements on federally supported projects. It also directs agencies to prioritize equal pay and pay transparency, support projects that offer workers benefits like child care, health insurance, paid leave, and retirement benefits. It will also push workforce development and workplace safety.

The Department of Transportation announced $1 billion to make local roads safer. The money will go to 354 local communities across America to improve roadway safety and prevent deaths and serious injuries. This is part of the National Roadway Safety Strategy launched in 2022, since then traffic fatalities have decreased for 9 straight quarters. Since 2022 the program has supported projects in 1,400 communities effecting 75% of all Americans.

The Department of Energy announced $430 million to support America's aging hydropower. Hydropower currently accounts for nearly 27% of renewable electricity generation in the United States. However many of our dams were built during the New Deal for a national average of 79 years old. The money will go to 293 projects across 33 states. These updates will improve energy generation, workplace safety, and have a positive environmental impact on local fish and wildlife.

The EPA announced $300 million to help support tribal nations, and US territories cut climate pollution and boost green energy. The money will support projects by 33 tribes, and the Island of Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands. EPA Administer Michael S. Regan announced the funds along side Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland in Arizona to highlight one of the projects. A project that will bring electricity for the first time to 900 homes on the Hopi Reservation.

The Biden-Harris Administration is investing $179 million in literacy. This investment in the Comprehensive Literacy State Development Grant is the largest in history. Studies have shown that the 3rd grade is a key moment in a students literacy development, the CLSD is designed to help support states research, develop, and implement evidence-based literacy interventions to help students achieve key literacy milestones.

The US government secured the release of 135 political prisoners from Nicaragua. Nicaragua's dictator President Daniel Ortega has jailed large numbers of citizens since protests against his rule broke out in 2018. In February 2023 the US secured the release of over 200 political prisoners. Human rights orgs have documented torture and sexual abuse in Ortega's prisons.

The Justice Department announced the disruption of a major effort by Russia to interfere with the 2024 US Elections. Russian propaganda network, RT, deployed $10 million to Tenet Media to help spread Russian propaganda and help sway the election in favor of Trump and the Republicans as well as disrupting American society. Tenet Media employs many well known conservative on-line personalities such as Benny Johnson, Tim Pool, Lauren Southern, Dave Rubin, Tayler Hansen and Matt Christiansen.

Vice-President Harris outlined her plan for Small Businesses at a campaign stop in New Hampshire. Harris wants to expand from $5,000 to $50,000 tax incentives for startup expenses. This would help start 25 million new small business over four years.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Iowa's starvation strategy

I don’t really buy that “the cruelty is the point.” I’m a materialist. Money talks, bullshit walks. When billionaires fund unimaginably cruel policies, I think the cruelty is a tactic, a way to get the turkeys to vote for Christmas. After all, policies that grow the fortune of the 1% at the expense of the rest of us have a natural 99% disapproval rating.

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/19/whats-wrong-with-iowa/#replicable-cruelty

So when some monstrous new law or policy comes down the pike, it’s best understood as a way of getting frightened, angry — and often hateful — people to vote for policies that will actively harm them, by claiming that they will harm others — brown and Black people, women, queers, and the “undeserving” poor.

Pro-oligarch policies don’t win democratic support — but policies that inflict harm a ginned-up group of enemies might. Oligarchs need frightened, hateful people to vote for policies that will secure and expand the power of the rich. Cruelty is the tactic. Power is the strategy. The point isn’t cruelty, it’s power:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/25/roe-v-wade-v-abortion/#no-i-in-uterus

But that doesn’t change the fact that the policies are cruel indeed. Take Iowa, whose billionaire-backed far-right legislature is on a tear, a killing spree that includes active collaboration with rapists, through a law that denies abortion care to survivors of rape and forces them to bear and care for their rapists’ babies:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/16/us/politics/iowa-kamala-harris-abortion.html

The forced birth movement is part of the wider far-right tactic of standing up for imaginary children (e.g. “the unborn,” fictional victims of Hollywood pedo cabals), and utterly abandons real children: poor kids who can’t afford school lunches, kids in cages, kids victimized by youth pastors, kids forced into child labor, etc.

So Iowa isn’t just a forced birth state, it’s a state where children are now to be starved, literally. The state legislature has just authorized an $18m project to kick people off of SNAP (aka food stamps). 270,000 people in Iowa rely on SNAP: elderly people, disabled people, and parents who can’t feed their kids.

Writing in the Washington Post, Kyle Swenson profiles some of these Iowans, like an elderly woman who visited Lisa Spitler’s food pantry for help and said that state officials had told her that she was only eligible for $23/month in assistance:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/04/16/iowa-snap-restrictions-food-stamps/

That’s because Iowa governor KimReynolds signed a bill cutting the additional SNAP aid — federally funded, and free to the state taxpayers of Iowa — that had been made available during the lockdown. Since then, food pantries have been left to paper over the cracks in the system, as Iowans begin to starve.

Before the pandemic, Spitler’s food pantry saw 30 new families a month. Now it’s 100 — and growing. Many of these families have been kicked off of SNAP because they failed to complete useless and confusing paperwork, or did so but missed the short deadlines now imposed by the state. For example, people with permanent disabilities and elderly people who no longer work must continuously file new paperwork confirming that their income hasn’t changed. Their income never changes.

SNAP recipients often work, borrow from relations, and visit food pantries, and still can’t make ends meet, like Amy Cunningham, a 31 year old mother of four in Charlton. She works at a Subway, has tapped her relatives for all they can afford, and relies on her $594/month in SNAP to keep her kids from going hungry. She missed her notice of an annual review and was kicked off the program. Getting kicked off took an instant. Getting reinstated took a starving eternity.

Iowa has a budget surplus of $1.91B. This doesn’t stop ghouls like Iowa House speaker Pat Grassley (a born-rich nepobaby whose grandpa is Senator Chuck Grassley) from claiming that the cuts were a necessity: “[SNAP is] growing within the budget, and are putting pressure on us being able to fund other priorities.”

Grassley’s caucus passed legislation on Jan 30 to kick people off of SNAP if their combined assets, including their work vehicle, total to more than $15,000. SNAP recipients will be subject to invasive means-testing and verification, which will raise the cost of administering SNAP from $2.2m to $18m. Anyone who gets flagged by the system has 10 days to respond or they’ll be kicked off of SNAP.

The state GOP justifies this by claiming that SNAP has an “error rate” of 11.81%. But that “error rate” includes people who were kicked off SNAP erroneously, a circumstance that is much more common than fraud, which is almost nonexistent in SNAP programs. Iowa’s error rate is in line with the national average.

Iowa’s pro-starvation law was authored by a conservative dark-money “think tank” based in Florida: the Opportunity Solutions Project, the lobbying arm of Foundation For Government Accountability, run by Tarren Bragdon, a Maine politician with a knack for getting money from the Koch Network and the DeVos family for projects that punish, humiliate and kill marginalized people. The Iowa bill mirrors provisions passed in Kentucky, Kansas, Wisconsin and elsewhere — and goes beyond them.

The law was wildly unpopular, but it passed anyway. It’s part of the GOP’s push for massive increases in government spending and bureaucracy — but only when those increases go to punishing poor people, policing poor people, jailing poor people, and spying on poor people. It’s truly amazing that the “party of small government” would increase bureaucratic spending to administer SNAP by 800% — and do it with a straight face.

In his essay “The Utopia of Rules,” David Graeber (Rest in Power) described this pathology: just a couple decades ago, the right told us that our biggest threat was Soviet expansion, which would end the “American way of life” and replace it with a dismal world where you spent endless hours filling in pointless forms, endured hunger and substandard housing, and shopped at identical stores that all carried the same goods:

https://memex.craphound.com/2015/02/02/david-graebers-the-utopia-of-rules-on-technology-stupidity-and-the-secret-joys-of-bureaucracy/

A society that can’t feed, house and educate its residents is a failed state. America’s inability to do politics without giving corporations a fat and undeserved share is immiserating an ever-larger share of its people. Federally, SNAP is under huge stress, thanks to the “public-private partnership” at the root of a badly needed “digital overhaul” of the program.

Writing for The American Prospect, Luke Goldstein describes how the USDA changed SNAP rules to let people pay with SNAP for groceries ordered online, as a way to deal with the growing problem of food deserts in poor and rural communities:

https://prospect.org/health/2023-04-19-retail-surveils-food-stamp-users/

It’s a good idea — in theory. But it was sabotaged from the start: first, the proposed rule was altered to ban paying for delivery costs with SNAP, meaning that anyone who ordered food online would have to use scarce cash reserves to pay delivery fees. Then, the USDA declined to negotiate discounts on behalf of the 40 million SNAP users. Finally, the SNAP ecommerce rules don’t include any privacy protections, which will be a bonanza for shadowy data-brokers, who’ll mine SNAP recipients’ data to create marketing lists for scammers, predatory lenders, and other bottom-feeder:

https://www.democraticmedia.org/sites/default/files/field/public-files/2020/cdd_snap_report_ff.pdf

The GOP’s best weapon in this war is statistical illiteracy. While racist, sexist and queerphobic policies mean that marginalized people are more likely than white people to be poor, America’s large population of white people — including elderly white people who are the immovable core of the GOP base — means that policies that target poor people inevitably inflict vast harms on the GOP’s most devoted followers.

Getting these turkeys to vote for Christmas is a sound investment for the ultra-rich, who claim a larger share of the American pie every year. The rich may or may not be racist, or sexist, or queerphobic — some of them surely are — but the reason they pour money into campaigns to stoke divisions among working people isn’t because they get off on hatred. The hatred is a tactic. The cruelty is a tactic. The strategic goal is wealth and power.

Tomorrow (Apr 21), I’m speaking in Chicago at the Stigler Center’s Antitrust and Competition Conference. This weekend (Apr 22/23), I’m at the LA Times Festival of Books.

[Image ID: The Iowa state-house. On the right side of the steps is an engraved drawing of Oliver Twist, holding out his porridge bowl. On the left side is the cook, denying him an extra portion. Peeking out from behind the dome is a business-man in a suit with a dollar-sign-emblazoned money-bag for a head.]

Image: Iqkotze (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Iowa_State_Capitol_April_2010.jpg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

[lesbianchemicalplant]

Starbucks is suing its union, Starbucks Workers United, after objecting to the group’s social media post in support of Palestine after the Hamas attack on Israel, according to an internal company note circulated Tuesday and obtained by The Intercept. The company had previously condemned the post but is now upping the ante, planning to take the union to court. In a message from Executive Vice President Sara Kelly, Starbucks argued that the union’s use of the name Starbucks confuses customers, and that some customers took their anger over the SWU statement out on store employees.  The union’s post read “Solidarity with Palestine!” and quote-tweeted an image of a bulldozer breaking through the fence encircling Gaza. More than 9,000 workers at 360 stores have now voted to join SWU, which is affiliated with Workers United and SEIU, according to its website, but they have been met with stiff resistance from the company on a potential contract. The company previously sent SWU a “cease and desist” order threatening legal action and now plans to follow through with that threat....

(October 17th 2023)

Starbucks and the union organizing its workers sued each other Wednesday in a standoff sparked by a social media post over the Israel-Hamas war. Starbucks sued Workers United in federal court in Iowa Wednesday, saying a pro-Palestinian social media post from a union account early in the Israel-Hamas war angered hundreds of customers and damaged its reputation. Starbucks is suing for trademark infringement, demanding that Workers United stop using the name “Starbucks Workers United” for the group that is organizing the coffee company’s workers. Starbucks also wants the group to stop using a circular green logo that resembles Starbucks’ logo. Workers United responded with its own filing, asking a federal court in Pennsylvania to rule that it can continue to use Starbucks’ name and a similar logo. Workers United also said Starbucks defamed the union by implying that it supports terrorism and violence. On Oct. 9, two days after Hamas militants rampaged across communities in southern Israel, Starbucks Workers United posted “Solidarity with Palestine!” on X, formerly known as Twitter. Workers United — a Philadelphia-based affiliate of the Service Employees International Union — said in its lawsuit that workers put up the tweet without the authorization of union leaders. The post was up for about 40 minutes before it was deleted. But posts and retweets from local Starbucks Workers United branches supporting Palestinians and condemning Israel were still visible on X Wednesday. Seattle-based Starbucks filed its lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa, noting that Iowa City Starbucks Workers United was among those posting pro-Palestinian messages. In a letter sent to Workers United on Oct. 13, Starbucks demanded that the union stop using its name and similar logo. In its response, Workers United said Starbucks Workers United’s page on X clearly identifies it as a union. “Starbucks is seeking to exploit the ongoing tragedy in the Middle East to bolster the company’s anti-union campaign,” Workers United President Lynne Fox wrote in a letter to Starbucks. In its lawsuit, Workers United noted that unions often use the company name of the workers they represent, including the Amazon Labor Union and the National Football League Players Association....

(October 18th 2023)

[kemetic-dreams]

First Afro-American ran for US President

“George Edwin Taylor ran for president a long time before Barack Obama.”

“Born in the pre-Civil War South to a mother who was free and a father who was enslaved, George Edwin Taylor would become the first African American selected by a political party to be its candidate for the presidency of the United States.

Taylor was born on August 4, 1857 in Little Rock, Arkansas to Amanda Hines and Bryant (Nathan) Taylor. At the age of two, George Taylor moved with his mother from Arkansas to Illinois. When Amanda died a few years later, George fended for himself until arriving in Wisconsin by paddleboat in 1865. Raised in and near La Crosse by a politically active African family, he attended Wayland University in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin from 1877 to 1879, after which he returned to La Crosse where he went to work for the La Crosse Free Press and then the La Crosse Evening Star. During the years 1880 to 1885 he produced newspaper columns for local papers as well as articles for the Chicago Inter Ocean.

Taylor's newspaper work brought him into politics--especially labor politics. He sided with one of the competing labor factions in La Crosse and helped re-elect the pro-labor mayor, Frank "White Beaver" Powell, in 1886. In the months that followed, Taylor became a leader and office holder in Wisconsin's statewide Union Labor Party, and his own newspaper, the Wisconsin Labor Advocate, became one of the newspapers of the party.

In 1887 Taylor was a member of the Wisconsin delegation to the first national convention of the Union Labor Party, which met in Ohio in April, and refocused his newspaper on national political issues. As his prominence increased, his race became an issue, and Taylor responded to the criticism by increasingly writing about African American issues. Sometime in 1887 or 1888 his paper ceased publication.

In 1891 Taylor moved to Oskaloosa, Iowa where he continued his interest in politics, first in the Republican Party and then with the Democrats. While in Iowa Taylor owned and edited the Negro Solicitor, and became president of the National Colored Men's Protective Association (an early civil rights organization) and the National Negro Democratic League, an organization of Africans within the Democratic Party. From 1900 to 1904 he aligned himself with the Populist faction that attempted to reform the Democratic Party.

Taylor and other independent-minded African Americans in 1904 joined the first national political party created exclusively for and by Africans, the National Liberty Party (NLP). The Party met at its national convention in St. Louis, Missouri in 1904 with delegates from thirty-six states. When the Party's candidate for president ended up in an Illinois jail, the NLP Executive Committee approached Taylor, asking him to be the party's candidate.

While Taylor's campaign attracted little attention, the Party's platform had a national agenda: universal suffrage regardless of race; Federal protection of the rights of all citizens; Federal anti-lynching laws; additional African regiments in the U.S. Army; Federal pensions for all former slaves; government ownership and control of all public carriers to ensure equal accommodations for all citizens; and home rule for the District of Columbia.

Taylor's presidential race was quixotic. In an interview published in The Sun (New York, November 20, 1904), he observed that while he knew whites thought his candidacy was a "joke," he believed that an independent political party that could mobilize the African American vote was the only practical way that blacks could exercise political influence. On election day, Taylor received a scattering of votes.

The 1904 campaign was Taylor's last foray into politics. He remained in Iowa until 1910 when he moved to Jacksonville. There he edited a succession of newspapers and was director of the African American branch of the local YMCA. He was married three times but had no children. George Edwin Taylor died in Jacksonville on December 23, 1925.”

Above written source=

George Edwin Taylor - 2014 - Question of the Month - Jim Crow Museum

The Brother tried and I knew all the Afro-Americans couldn't vote for him because voter suppression .

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Adam Kredo

Lawmakers like Budd, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, have taken a great interest in the Palestine Chronicle and its nonprofit parent company, the People Media Project, since the Free Beacon first reported on Monday about its links to Iranian regime-controlled propaganda sites. The outlet’s editor in chief, Ramzy Baroud, wrote for two now-defunct websites that the U.S. government seized in 2020 for being part of a propaganda network controlled by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC). At least six of the outlet’s writers also wrote for these IRGC-controlled sites.

Following Aljamal’s death during an Israeli raid in Gaza to free the hostages, the Palestine Chronicle published a glowing obituary, claiming its writer was just an innocent civilian trying to perform journalism. As Budd and his colleagues note in their letter, however, Aljamal "previously served as a spokesman for the Hamas-run Palestinian Ministry of Labor in Gaza."

"While Aljamal may have played a journalist by day, the evidence clearly suggests he was, at a minimum, a Hamas collaborator, if not a full-time terror operative, responsible for keeping hostages captive," according to the letter, which is also backed by Sens. Ted Cruz (R., Texas), Joni Ernst (R., Iowa), Rick Scott (R., Fla.), Pete Ricketts (R., Neb.), and Roger Wicker (R., Miss.), the ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

With questions now swirling about the Palestine Chronicle and its editor Baroud, the senators say a multi-pronged federal investigation is necessary to determine if the outlet and its parent company were "actively employing an individual with apparent ties to and support for Hamas." The Palestine Chronicle downplayed its ties to Aljamal in a Monday piece, saying Aljamal "was a freelance writer who contributed articles to the Palestine Chronicle on a voluntary basis, mostly since the start of the Israeli genocide in Gaza."

"It is possible that this tax-exempt media outlet had no knowledge of its correspondent’s Hamas affiliation; however, given the organization’s recent attempts to cover up evidence of its ties to Aljamal, this seems unlikely, making them complicit in supporting terrorist propaganda on their platform," the senators wrote.

The lawmakers also instructed the IRS to "prepare a report on the findings of this investigation for the [Senate] Finance Committee to review in the appropriate venue."

[girlactionfigure]

The dark-haired girl on the right with the impish smile, her name was Eddie Lou, she was about 8 years old when this photo was taken in 1909. The picture was taken at the Tifton Cotton Mill, Tifton, Georgia. The girls worked there.

The photograph was taken by Lewis Hine, who visited factories such as this mill and took photographs of the children who worked there as evidence for the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC).

In another part of the country, Mary Harris Jones, also known as "Mother Jones", led a march of children from Philadelphia to New York in what would be known as the March of the Mill Children, a three-week trek by striking child and adult textile workers on July 7, 1903.

Children had been forced to work in coal mines and mills, when their fathers were killed or injured, unable to support the families. As a result, many children suffered stunted growth and were injured, maimed. Mother Jones described the children, "some with their hands off, some with the thumb missing, some with their fingers off at the knuckle. They were stooped things, round shouldered and skinny. Many of them were not over ten years of age, the state law prohibited their working before they were twelve years of age."

“Since 2000, for nearly two decades, the world had been making steady progress in reducing child labour,” according to the United Nations. “But over the past few years, conflicts, crises and the COVID-19 pandemic, have plunged more families into poverty – and forced millions more children into child labour. Economic growth has not been sufficient, nor inclusive enough, to relieve the pressure that too many families and communities feel and that makes them resort to child labour. Today, 160 million children are still engaged in child labour. That is almost one in ten children worldwide.”

This is an update of a series of stories that have been posted for Labor Day. You can find those stories in the Peace Page archive or Google the information on your own to find out more.

~~~~~

“Over 100 years ago, the National Child Labor Committee used photos of children doing industrial work to demand change in America. Several states adopted child labor laws, and after much debate and several setbacks, the Fair Labor Standards Act became law in 1938. Its protections included the nation’s foundational child labor laws, including restrictions on the age of workers and hours they can toil,” wrote Michael Lazzeri, regional administrator of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division in Chicago

Max McCoy of the the Kansas Reflector wrote today on September 3, 2023:

“After more than a century of progress, you might think child labor is a thing of the past, something we condemn other countries for but that we don’t need to worry about here. Tragically, that shadow army of workers is still with us, and many of those workers are children. These underage exploited are often immigrants . . .”

“In February of this year, a cleaning company was fined $1.5 million for employing children ages 13 to 17 at meatpacking plants in eight states. The firm, Packers Sanitations Services Inc., was the target of a federal Department of Labor investigation that found 102 children working illegally, including 26 at the Cargill meatpacking plant at Dodge City.

“Appallingly, many states are now racing to loosen — not tighten — child labor laws.

“Arkansas, for example, in March did away with the requirement that the state’s Division of Labor had to give permission or verify the age of children under 16 to be employed. Although those under 14 still cannot be employed, the ending of age verification requirements is an invitation to child labor abuses.

“Other states are making similar moves.

“Iowa, for example, has made it legal for teenagers to work in meatpacking plants and children as young as 16 to bartend. New Jersey and New Hampshire have also lowered ages for some types of work. The argument goes that work builds character and that overly restrictive laws prevent young people from fully developing their capacity to earn a living.

“But such arguments stink like the stuff you find on a slaughterhouse floor.”

~~~~~

"In the early 1900s, Hine traveled across the United States to photograph preteen boys descending into dangerous mines, shoeless 7-year-olds selling newspapers on the street and 4-year-olds toiling on tobacco farms. Though the country had unions to protect laborers at that time — and Labor Day, a federal holiday to honor them — child labor was widespread and widely accepted. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that around the turn of the century, at least 18 percent of children between the ages of 10 and 15 were employed," according to the Washington Post.

Mother Jones would say after the march, "I held up their mutilated hands and showed them to the crowd and made the statement that Philadelphia's mansions were built on the broken bones, the quivering hearts and drooping heads of these children. That their little lives went out to make wealth for others. That neither state or city officials paid any attention to these wrongs. That they did not care that these children were to be the future citizens of the nation."

Many industries hid the fact that they employed children. They took advantage of poor families, such as Eddie Lou's family. Eddie Lou's father had died and left her mother with 11 children and no income. Her mother was forced to work at the cotton mill for $4.50 a week. Eddie Lou and four siblings also worked there and they were all together paid $4.50 as well. Eddie Lou and her youngest siblings would eventually be sent to an orphanage because her mother wasn't able to provide for them.

“If we don’t hold the line on child labor, we risk losing one of the things the has sets us apart as a nation founded not only on laws, but of morals,” wrote McCoy. “Of course children provide cheap labor, but business profits should not be the gauge of our society. In addition to the mental and physical tolls that children suffer in jobs that are inappropriate — and can you really imagine a 16-year-old wiping down the bar and asking what’s your poison? — there’s also a danger these children will become primary breadwinners for their families, with their educations coming a distant second.”

The children at the march carried banners that said, "We want more schools and less hospitals" and "We want time to play."

~ jsr

The Jon S. Randal Peace Page

[us-laws-you-should-know]

Work Expenses: Who Pays?

There are all sorts of work-related expenses out there that an employee might have to face, from the cost of their work uniform to the cost of cleaning their work uniform to bills for the cell phone they use for work calls to the cost of that laptop used for working from home.

The question is, under the law, when is the employer mandated to pay for such expenses, rather than leaving them to the individual employee to bear?

Summary: Under federal law, the only requirement is that expenses not bring employees' pay under minimum wage.

California and Illinois say the employer must cover "necessary expenditures and losses" including remote work equipment.

Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota also say the employer must cover all the employee "expends or loses" due to work.

Washington D.C. says the employer must pay for required tools.

Iowa, New York, and New Hampshire require that the expenses be "authorized" by the employer or that employer and employee have an "agreement" beforehand for the employer to be liable for the costs. Iowa says such costs must be reimbursed within 30 days.

Minnesota requires that employee-paid work expenses be limited to $50 a month, and that the employer reimburse such costs at the end of the employee's employment.

Massachusetts requires that employers pay transportation expenses and the cost of uniforms specifically.

Federal law says only that if the employee's paying for expenses, that can't be used to effectively bring their wages below minimum wage level. So, if you're making minimum wage at a McDonald's, your employer can't then take the price of your work uniform out of your first paycheck, because then you'd effectively be making less than minimum wage.

This doesn't just apply to expenses directly paid to the employer, either; the statute specifically says that if the employee is required to buy their own tools required for a job, they have to be reimbursed if that would mean their pay going below minimum wage after deducting the cost of the tools from their pay.

But this only comes into play in connection to minimum wage. If your pay is high enough that your work expenses would still leave you above minimum wage, federal law doesn't say anything else making your employer liable for the cost.

But that's federal law. US law in general, and especially labor law, often has more specific restrictions within certain states, and this is no exception.

California law says that the employer has to pay for "all necessary expenditures or losses incurred by the employee in direct consequence of the discharge of his or her duties". In other words, if it's necessary for the job, under California law, the employer should be footing the bill. What counts as a "necessary expenditure or loss"? Excellent question. No definition is given for this in the statute, so it's all open for debate... though a recent court case suggests it includes remote working equipment, including for jobs that are normally in-person but went to remote work during the lockdown.

Illinois state law uses similar wording, with the employer paying for "all necessary expenditures or losses incurred by the employee within the employee's scope of employment and directly related to services performed for the employer." Illinois' statute does actually give a bit more definition to what counts as "necessary" here, however, and a 2023 amendment included specific factors to weigh when determining whether an expense is "necessary" and therefore should be paid by the employer. Like California, Illinois has specified that remote work equipment counts here.

Montana is similar as well, using the wording "all that he necessarily expends or loses in direct consequence of the discharge of his duties", as long as it's not "in consequence of the ordinary risks of the business in which he is employed." North Dakota's wording is nearly identical, with "all that the employee necessarily expends or loses in direct consequence of the discharge of the employee's duties as such" unless it's tools or equipment "also used by the employee outside the scope of employment". South Dakota also has similar wording, "all that the employee necessarily expends or loses in direct consequence of the discharge of the employee's duties".

Washington, D.C. law has the employer paying "the cost of purchasing and maintaining any tools required of the employee in the performance of the business of the employer."

Iowa's version is stricter, saying that the expense must be "authorized by the employer", but also sets a timetable, saying that such expenses must be reimbursed within thirty days' time. Similarly, New York says that the issue arises after there is an "agreement" between employer and employee about the expenses, and New Hampshire says that it must be "at the request of the employer".

Minnesota's got a different take on it--employers can make employees foot the bill, but once the employment ends, the employer has to pay the employee back for uniforms, equipment, supplies, and travel expenses that aren't just regular commuting. Also the initial out-of-pocket cost to the employee for such things can't be more than $50 a month. Although there's some weird exceptions and additional specifics for employees of motor vehicle dealers...

Massachusetts law specifically requires payment of "transportation expenses" and uniforms by the employer, with a definition given for what does and does not count as a uniform. The cost of uniform cleaning is covered if it requires "dry-cleaning, commercial laundering, or other special treatment".

Note that this is all assuming the employee would pay directly; laws vary somewhat if it is instead the employee charging (real, believed, and/or fraudulent) work expenses to a company card or account directly.

[mogai-sunflowers]

MOGAI BHM- Day 9!

happy BHM! today i’m going to be talking about the Tuskegee Airmen and Black people during world war 1 and 2!

Black People During World War I-

[Image ID: A black-and-white photograph of the Harlem Hellfighters, a group of Black men who served in World War 1. They are all wearing buttoned wool overcoats as part of their uniforms, and are all smiling and pumping their fists in the air in a cheerful, prideful way. End ID.]

Although they were treated inhumanely, many Black men were still eager to serve their country in the military- often because they hoped it would prove their humanity and their worth, as well as show others that they deserved equal rights. Sadly, this wasn’t always a reality.

When World War I was declared, around 20,000 Black men enlisted in military service. Later, that number dramatically increased to 700,000 Black men registered for military service- but the armed forces were segregated, and Black people weren’t allowed to serve in the Marines or the Navy. Additionally, the federal government provided no provisions for creating Black military units, training centers for Black soldiers, or protecting enlisted Black people.

Many Black people protested the injustices of the US Armed Forces, and though military training camps remained segregated, protesting led to the training and registration of 600 Black military officers at Fort Des Moines in Iowa. As suppressed as they were, Black fighters formed Black fighting units that provided vital support to troops on the ground in France.

One such unit was the 369th Regiment. A Black unit of soldiers, this unit was the longest-serving unit in a foreign army, and they never lost a single member- they were the first to arrive at key battles in France, provided integral support, and their success and tenacity earned them the title “Harlem Hellfighters”, as well as the “Black Rattlers”. The 369th Infantry Regiment operated a band that played music and performances for troops, which played a key role in inspiring those troops and greatly increased rapport with French troops. Another notable Black unit, the only to be commanded by Black officers, was the 370th Infantry Regiment, which also provided key battle support.

In France, the 200,000 Black troops deployed there were mainly relegated to labor units rather than fighting units- although they had signed up to fight, they instead were ordered to build railways, unload ships, and become mechanics and stevedores, rather than actually participate in combat. 

Black fighters laid the foundations for success in World War I. When the war ended, many Black fighters returned home with a renewed sense of Black identity- and despite segregation, discrimination, and struggles within the Armed Forces, many Black men reported being treated better overseas than in the very country they were fighting for. This caused a huge wave of outcry for change, an outcry which helped usher in the Harlem Renaissance.

Black People During World War II-

[Image ID: A black-and-white photograph of the Tuskegee Airmen, a group of Black fighter pilots from World War II. The group is organized into two rows, the back one standing and the front one kneeling. They are all dressed in their fighters uniforms, dark jackets and pants, with a parachute strapped over their chest, and they’re in front of a plane labeled ‘TONDELAYO 75′. End ID.]

As war was mounting, the same obstacles that Black soldiers had faced in WWI were still happening in the Armed Forces. Black activists in charge of the March on Washington put pressure on FDR by threatening to protest and march if he didn’t do something about it, which resulted in his signing of Executive Order 8802, which forbade discrimination in the defense industry, a victory for Black activists although discrimination and segregation continued in the Armed Forces throughout the decade. 

Mabel Staupers, a Black woman in charge of the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses, lobbied and advocated against racial discrimination and discriminatory policies in the Army Nurse Corps, which led to an amendment to the Nurses Training Bill barring racial bias- although in practice, the small cap number of Black nurses allowed in the Army Nurse Corps wasn’t lifted until 1944.

Throughout WWII, the Armed Forces were still segregated- and yet, despite that, over 1 million Black Americans served in WWII. Black soldiers served in such famous units as the 332nd Fighter Unit, which shot down more than 110 enemy planes over the course of nearly 200 missions, as well as the 761st Tank Battalion. The first Black soldier to win the Navy Cross was a man named Doris Miller, a steward who, despite not being trained to do so, manned machine guns during the Attack on Pearl Harbor and carried many people to safety. Another famous Black first of WWII was Major Charity Adams, who became the first Black woman to serve in the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps.

The most famous Black unit of fighters to come out of WWII is the Tuskegee Airmen. Up until WWII, Black people had been completely banned from the Air Force- they had never been allowed to be trained as fighter pilots or been allowed to join air units of the Armed Forces. That changed with the Tuskegee Airmen.

After Black activism pushed to start adding Black pilots to the Armed Forces, a plan was formed to start training a 99th Infantry of Black fighter pilots at Tuskegee Airfield, constructed for that very purpose in Alabama. The Tuskegee Airmen were the first Black aviators in any American unit and war, and within a few years, almost 1,000 Black pilots were trained at the Tuskegee Institute, with thousands more Black personnel working there. The Tuskegee Airmen left a profound legacy and impact on the Armed Forces.

Black soldiers were not the only Black people making massive impacts during WWII- the Black homefront was changing and contributing rapidly, through a campaign known as the ‘Double V Campaign’. Launched by a man named James G. Thompson with his letter titled “Should I Sacrifice to Life ‘Half-American’?” in a Pittsburgh newspaper, the Double V Campaign had two goals- gain victory on the warfront, and on the homefront.

The premise of the Double V Campaign was that Black Americans shouldn’t have to die at war for a country that didn’t see them as human or value that ultimate sacrifice. Black soldiers saw fighting as an opportunity to prove to the USA that they deserved to be seen as citizens, to be treated fairly, and that they were just as valuable to America as white people. Black civilians saw change on the warfront as inspiration to create change on the homefront.

Working with the federal government, a large amount of HBCUs began offering 50+ different classes on subjects relevant to homefront and warfront efforts during wartime, like mechanics, nutrition, photography, electronics, boat building, nursing, among others. These classes mobilized Black localities across the South to become active parts of homefront efforts- sustaining jobs of the soldiers who’d gone to war, producing machines to be sent overseas for soldiers, and more.

Black participation on the homefront during WWII was just as vital as Black participation in fighting, and was a large motivation behind the roots of the Civil Rights Movement. It was during WWII that Black communities started forming schools to teach about civil rights, nonviolent direct action, and literacy, and it was during WWII that student activist groups first started staging sit ins and other forms of protest, which became the heartbeat of the Civil Rights Movement in the following decades.

In 1948, Black activism and political pressure resulted in the signing of an order that completely desegregated the USA’s Armed Forces.

Summary-

During WWII, more than 100,000 Black soldiers served despite huge obstacles including segregation, and famous units like the Harlem Hellfighters emerged

During WWII, the Armed Forces were still segregated. Despite this, more than 1 million Black people served.

Black activism led to bans on racial bias in the defense industry and the Army Nurse Corps., and the Tuskegee Airmen emerged as the famous, first Black aviators ever

On the homefront, HBCUs and Black communities launched the Double V Campaign to gain victory in war and at home, and it included the work of HBCUs with the federal government to offer many courses adjacent to homefront and warfront responsibilities, training and mobilizing thousands of Black civilians on the homefront

The Armed Forces were officially desegregated in 1948

tagging @metalheadsforblacklivesmatter​ @neopronouns​ @epikulupu​ @justlgbtthings​ @transhaunting​ 

Sources-

https://history.delaware.gov/world-war-i/african-americans-ww1/#:~:text=After%20the%20declaration%20of%20war,had%20registered%20for%20military%20service.

https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/1429624/african-american-troops-fought-to-fight-in-world-war-i/ 

https://www.archives.gov/research/african-americans/wwi/war 

https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/double-v-victory 

https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/african-americans-fought-freedom-home-and-abroad-during-world-war-ii#:~:text=More%20than%20one%20million%20African,and%20in%20the%20US%20military.

https://www.army.mil/article/233117/honoring_black_history_world_war_ii_service_to_the_nation

https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/tuskegee-airmen-blackpast-org/#:~:text=The%20Tuskegee%20Airmen%20were%20the,their%20lives%20during%20that%20period.

https://www.tuskegeeairmen.org/

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the longest-serving national independent in American history, will seek a fourth term in the US Senate later this year.

The 82-year-old progressive made the announcement in an 8 ½ minute video on X, touting his record while listing off several legislative priorities he hopes to accomplish in the years ahead.

"These are very difficult times for our country and the world," said Sanders. "And, in many ways, this 2024 election is the most consequential election in our lifetimes."

Sanders — the second-oldest member of the Senate, behind 90-year-old Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa — had been coy about his plans for months. He is the last US senator whose term ends in 2024 to announce whether he'd seek reelection.

Sanders is immensely popular in Vermont and is all but guaranteed to be reelected in November. Though he is a registered independent, he is likely to have the support of the state Democratic Party.

His long-shot 2016 presidential campaign against Hillary Clinton helped ignite the modern-day progressive movement, paving the way for figures like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the "The Squad" while helping to steer the Democratic Party in a more leftward direction.

Sanders ran for president again in 2020 but ultimately came up short to Joe Biden and dropped out of the race weeks into the COVID-19 pandemic.

Sanders was long considered a fringe player, but in recent years he's become something of a kingmaker in progressive politics and an important institutional player in the Senate. In his announcement video, he said he's "in a strong position to provide the kind of help that Vermonters need in these difficult times."

Under Biden's presidency, Sanders has served as the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee and later of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

That's allowed him to make his mark on major party-line legislation while pushing for transformative progressive policies, including a 32-hour workweek and a $17 federal minimum wage.

In recent months, Sanders — the Jewish son of a Polish immigrant — has become the Senate's lead critic of Israel's handling of the war in Gaza, where he's pushed to place conditions on US aid to Israel.

[follow-up-news]

Lawmakers in several states are embracing legislation to let children work in more hazardous occupations, longer hours on school nights and in expanded roles including serving alcohol in bars and restaurants as young as 14.

The efforts to significantly roll back labor rules are largely led by Republican lawmakers to address worker shortages and in some cases run afoul of federal regulations.

Child welfare advocates worry the measures represent a coordinated push to scale back hard-won protections for minors.

“The consequences are potentially disastrous,” said Reid Maki, director of the Child Labor Coalition, which advocates against exploitative labor policies. “You can’t balance a perceived labor shortage on the backs of teen workers.”

Lawmakers proposed loosening child labor laws in at least 10 states over the past two years, according to a report published last month by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. Some bills became law, while others were withdrawn or vetoed.

Legislators in Wisconsin, Ohio and Iowa are actively considering relaxing child labor laws to address worker shortages, which are driving up wages and contributing to inflation. Employers have struggled to fill open positions after a spike in retirements, deaths and illnesses from COVID-19, decreases in legal immigration and other factors.

The job market is one of the tightest since World War II, with the unemployment rate at 3.4% — the lowest in 54 years.

[nodynasty4us]

Dave Nagle, of Cedar Falls, is a former Iowa Democratic Party state chairman and three-term U.S. congressman from Iowa.

From his August 7, 2023 opinion piece:

When Trump made his announcement, I was encouraged, because I thought there was a chance, just a chance, that the 2024 elections might be about real issues, questions which go to the fundamental purpose of our own representative democratic form of government. The topics were three: * The power of the presidency to redirect funds appropriated by Congress. Trump wants to be empowered to disregard congressional direction and either not spend the money at all or divert the funds to different federal functions. * Secondly, he wishes to diminish what hard-line conservatives have termed the “administrative state.” He would lessen the power of regulation given to federal agencies, like the Environmental Protection Agency, the IRS, Department of Labor, etc. * And, finally, he would replace the civil service system with political appointees, who would run the administrative state as the president wants, not necessarily as the law would require. To all these proposals in combination, I can only say:  Wow!  Nothing coupled together could put before the voting public the very question of the amount of power that should be transferred to the executive branch.

[thebookbin]

I need my fellow white gays to take a step back.

If I see another white American saying they unequivocally support Disney in their lawsuit against Ron DeSantis in Florida, I am going to scream. One of my most favorite authors disappointed me deeply this week by condemning those of us who are not cheering for total Disney dominance here on tumblr.

Just because your whiteness and your Americanness shields you from having to confront that Disney helped the genocide of Uyghurs in Xinjiang as late as 2020 does not mean the just of us can swallow that pill. This was a cold and calculated choice to maintain profits. When Disney was brought before a Human Rights Tribunal and questioned not only why they filmed in Xinjiang but thanked the government profusely (groveling on their knees to keep the CCP happy so they could air Mulan in China's billion dollar market), they responded with "the benefits outweigh the risks." Americans just don't care.

That is only one example out of thousands. If there is something evil going on in the world, Disney has their grubby hands in the pot (including ties to Epstein). Before all of this nonsense they were funding the campaigns of Republicans who signed and backed the "Don't Say Gay" bill.

If you are a Disney Adult, there is no hope for you. You will always choose your expensive mouse-shaped ice cream and minimum wage workers in fancy costumes and your own escapism, over the lives and dignity of others. It disgusts me.

Disney is not taking a moral stand. They are making a business decision.

Disney does not care about you, they do not care about trans kids, they do not care about marriage equality, representation, or your basic human rights. They do not care about creativity, or storytelling, or art. All they care about it money. It's not a moral failing, either. THAT'S WHAT CORPORTATIONS EXIST TO DO. MAKE MONEY. The fact that you are falling for their marketing scheme to take your money only goes to show how effective it is.

I am a lesbian. I am an activist. I care deeply about what is happening right now in this country, most especially to the trans community. We need to be fighting. We need to protect them, and protect each other.

However selling your soul to the devil to do it is the fastest way to get us all to hell.

Did anybody even notice the 2nd biggest bank failure in US history happened over the weekend? And self-described "Diversity Activists" helped it happen.

A note for those of you who won't click the link. The language of inclusion has long been co-opted by the corporate class and everybody's falling for it.

Right now, Disney operates a kingdom inside the US. And no, not the "fun" kind. Reedy Creek Improvement District functions like sovereign state or a tribal nation. They have the ability to tax, their own police force, and have already negotiated carte blanche to build a nuclear reactor any time and for any reason. You need to step back and ask yourself if you are really okay with a multi-billion dollar corporation having that much power.

To make it worse, they want more. The lawsuit they are currently engaged in is about contract rights and it is making conservatives salivate at the mouth.

If Disney wins this lawsuit unchallenged, labor rights in the US will be obliterated.

This is not an exaggeration. I am talking about going back to the days of child labor (which is already happening in Iowa), Disney, or any corporation will be able to sue the government for "interfering their private contracts" EVEN IF those "contracts" violate minimum wage, health and safety standards, or ANY REGULATION local, state or federal government enacts to protect workers.

When I say that you allowing your whiteness to shape your worldview and it will destroy us, this is both an inditement and a call-to-action.

Because I also happen to care deeply about labor rights, I know that a majority of the LGBT community in the US are working class, and over 25% of us live in poverty--

Because I know that we are at much higher risk of losing the source of household income than our straight counterparts--

Because I know that not only did we overwhelmingly had to work during the pandemic, risking our lives to make ends meet, we are more likely to work more hours, get paid less, and have to file for unemployment. Now take into consideration any sort of intersectional identity, including race, disability, or class and the numbers just get worse and worse-- I know that the queer community cannot afford to take these hits.

This is not Labor Rights vs Gay Rights. It is two, powerful malicious entities fighting to maintain power, and all of us are in the firing line. Labor Rights are Gay Rights are Black Rights are Human Rights.

So square up, it's time to fight.

And, remember: selling your soul to the mouse is selling your soul to the devil dressed like a cartoon character. Don't fall for it.

Recommended Watching: (independent media)

Sources: (in order of appearance)

Disney & China: BBC Unrepresented Nations & Peoples Organization Vox News

Disney's Abuses: Investigative Journalist Team: Judd Legum, Tesnim Zekeria, & Rebecca Crosby Investigative Journalist Liz Crokin The Guardian Pink News Movie Web The Corporate Research Project The American Prospect IGN

General Labor: Des Moines Register Investigative Journalist Lee Fang Reedy Creek Improvement District

LGBT Labor: Center for American Progress US Census Report

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

April 28, 2023

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

APR 29, 2023

According to the nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute, legislatures in at least ten states have set out to weaken federal child labor laws. In the first three months of 2023, legislators in Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, and South Dakota introduced bills to weaken the regulations that protect children in the workplace, and in March, Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed a law repealing restrictions for workers younger than 16.

Those in favor of the new policies argue that fewer restrictions on child labor will protect parents’ rights, but in fact the new labor measures have been written by the Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA), a Florida-based right-wing think tank. FGA is working to dismantle the federal government to get rid of business regulations. It has focused on advancing its ideology through the states for a while now, but the argument that its legislation protects parental rights has recently enabled them to wedge open a door to attack regulations more broadly.  

FGA is part of a larger story about Republicans’ attempt to undermine federal power in order to enact a radical agenda through their control of the states.

That goal has been part of the Republican agenda since the 1980s, as leaders who hated federal regulation of business, provision of a social safety net, and protection of civil rights recognized that a strong majority of Americans actually quite liked those things and getting Congress to repeal them would be a terribly hard sell. Instead, Republicans used their control of federal courts to weaken the power of the federal government and send power back to the states.

Historically, states have been far easier than the much larger, more diverse federal government for a few wealthy men to dominate. After 1986, Republicans began to restrict voting in the states they controlled, giving themselves an advantage, and after 2010 they focused on taking over the states through gerrymandering. This has enabled them to stop Congress from enacting popular legislation and has created quite radical state legislatures. Currently, in 29 of them, Republicans have supermajorities, permitting them to legislate however they wish.

The process of taking control of the states by choosing who can vote got stronger today when the North Carolina Supreme Court, now controlled by Republicans, revisited an earlier ruling concerning partisan gerrymandering. Overruling the previous decision, the court green-lighted partisan gerrymandering, opening the door for even more extreme gerrymanders in the future. The court also okayed voter restrictions that primarily affect Black people.

Gutting the federal government and throwing power to the states makes it easier for business leaders to cozy up to legislators and slash business regulations. It also enables a radical minority to enact its own worldview despite the wishes of the state. This dynamic is very clear over abortion rights and gun safety.

Last June, quite dramatically, the Supreme Court overturned federal protection of the right to an abortion guaranteed in the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. In the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health decision the right-wing court said that decisions about abortion rights belonged to voters at the state level.

But as the last ten months have made clear, the right wing does not really intend to let the voters of the states make decisions that contradict right-wing ideology.

After the Dobbs decision, Republican-dominated legislatures immediately began to restrict the right to abortion, although it remains popular in the country and voters have rejected extreme abortion restrictions in every special election held since the decision. Now Republican legislators in Ohio are trying to head off an abortion rights amendment scheduled for a popular vote in November by requiring 60% of voters, rather than 50%, to amend the state constitution.

Gun safety shows the same pattern. A new Fox News poll out yesterday shows that 87% of voters favor background checks for gun purchases, 81% favor making 21 the minimum age to buy a gun, 80% want mental health care checks on all gun buyers, 80% want flags for people who are dangerous to themselves or others, 77% want a 30-day waiting period to buy a gun, and 61% want an assault weapons ban.

And yet, Republican majorities in state legislatures are rapidly rolling back gun laws. Republican lawmakers in the Tennessee legislature went so far recently as to expel two young Black representatives when they encouraged protesters after the majority quashed their attempts to introduce gun safety measures after a mass shooting in Nashville. But they were not alone. Last week, when the Nebraska senate passed a  permitless concealed carry law, Melody Vaccaro, executive director of Nebraskans Against Gun Violence, shouted “Shame!” multiple times. She has since been “barred and banned” from the Nebraska statehouse.

The attempt of a radical minority to enforce their will on the rest of us, who constitute a majority, by stealing control of the states and then, through them, control of the federal government is precisely what the Confederates tried to do before the Civil War: it is no accident that one of the insurrectionists who attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, carried a replica of a Confederate battle flag.

And yet, in the wake of the Civil War, when former Confederates tried to dominate their Black neighbors despite the defeat of their ideology on the battlefields, Congress tried to make it impossible to pervert our democracy by capturing the states. It passed and in 1868 the states ratified the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, putting into our fundamental laws the principle that the federal government trumps state power.

It reads, “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws,” and it gives Congress the “power to enforce…the provisions of this article.”

—

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[brilokuloj]

Lawmakers target child labor laws to ease worker shortage

Legislators in multiple states are invoking a widespread labor shortage to push bills that would weaken long-standing child labor laws. Iowa lawmakers are considering Republican legislation that would allow 14- and 15-year-olds to work in industrial laundry services and freezers at meatpacking plants. It'd also prevent many of them from receiving worker's compensation if they are sickened, injured or killed on the job. The federal government promised to crack down on illegal child labor last month after observing a 69% increase in companies employing underage workers since 2018.

Alone and Exploited, Migrant Children Work Brutal Jobs Across the U.S.

“I still have to pay back my debt, so I still have to work,” said Mauricio Ramirez, 17, who has found a meat processing job in the next town over. Charlene Irizarry, the human resources manager at Farm Fresh Foods, an Alabama meat plant that struggles to retain staff, recently realized she was interviewing a 12-year-old for a job slicing chicken breasts into nuggets in a section of the factory kept at 40 degrees. Federal law bars minors from a long list of dangerous jobs, including roofing, meat processing and commercial baking. Except on farms, children younger than 16 are not supposed to work for more than three hours or after 7 p.m. on school days.

Company fined $1.5 million for hiring children to clean meatpacking plants

At least three minors suffered injuries while cleaning slaughterhouses, including a chemical burn to the face, the Washington Post reports. The minors worked overnight shifts and used caustic chemicals to "clean razor-sharp saws" and other high-risk equipment, the Labor Department said. The states with facilities listed in the department's announcement were mostly across the South and Midwest, including Arkansas, Minnesota and Nebraska.

I guess making child labor legal is one way to "crack down on illegal child labor"