Iowa Republicans Ask Government - and Kids - to Solve the State's Labor Shortage

It's Hypocrisy on Parade

One of the problems with Republicans these days is they never actually believe what they say they believe.

They wear American flag pins in their lapels to proclaim their patriotism. Yet, most of them have voiced little objection to the January 6, 2021 insurrection that tried to overthrow a democratic election. Those that do have something to say about it most often support it. Donald Trump, the insurrection’s main promoter and source of incitement, still actively defends it. He remains the party’s front runner.

The flag lapel pin means nothing.

Republicans say the best level of government to make policy decisions is the one closest to the people - local governments. Yet they are in a frenzied rush to pass laws across the country to restrict those same local governments - even local school districts and libraries - from making decisions about their own policies that affect only their own local area.

Their ideological and partisan agendas always are a higher priority. Those agendas usually serve the special interests which fund their campaigns, of course. Coincidence? No. That’s how the Republican Party rolls today.

They are an exercise in hypocrisy on parade.

Their latest effort - in Iowa, Aransas, and other states - to roll back child labor protections is completely at odds with their professed claim that they believe the government should stay out of private markets and let the markets work their will and have their way with folks, no matter who gets hurt - as long as its not them or their political allies and campaign contributors.

Personally, I think their brand of laissez faire economics is bad policy even if they actually believed it and acted that way. But that’s a discussion for another day. Suffice it to say if government intervention helps them or their special interest allies - they will always go with intervention. If something is beneficial to other people, then they roll out the sermons about free markets.

The Iowa Legislature has provided the latest example of that never-ending march of hypocrisy. They voted to roll back child labor protection laws and sent it to the governor who says she will sign it. She’s one of those Republicans who will always choose special interests, right wing ideology or a strictly partisan agenda, so whether she would sign it was never really in question.

Bear in mind that those laws were enacted to keep kids safe by restricting what kind of jobs kids can have, how old they need to be to hold them, the number of hours they can work, the conditions under which they are allowed to work, and the schedules they can work.

The idea was to keep them safe and also to make sure they have time to be a kid, get an education, and get the rest growing minds and bodies need.

If you doubt whether those laws worked, look at some old factory or coal mine pictures from the early 1900s - and the dirty, grim, unsmiling, blank faced and exhausted kids whose images are captured in them. Then compare them to pictures of kids today with their softball or track teams; at their chorus or band concerts, or school plays; with their basketball or football teams, their projects at the science fair, at a 4-H fair, or on a class trip. Or just being kids.

Iowa Republicans said we needed to roll back child labor protection laws because, in language that George Orwell himself could have scripted, the roll back will provide kids with more “job opportunities.”

Personally, I think we should worry more about providing kids with access to health care, adequate nutrition, libraries not censored by right wing Republican thought police, a quality education and schools where they don’t have to worry about being shot every day.

The Republican agenda has no room for any of that these days. Especially in Iowa which sinks deeper into the right wing muck every day.

I do not buy their Orwellian claim that providing kids “job opportunities” is why they are rolling back child labor protection laws in Iowa and elsewhere around the country.

It’s a transparent effort, in my view, to use state government to intervene to keep wages low, to ease the state’s labor shortage - to intervene in the labor market - to benefit employers who pay low wages and offer little or no benefits. It’s market intervention by the government, pure, plain and simple, at the expense of Iowa’s workers.

Whenever there is a proposal for government to do anything that would help people, Republicans always wail that we need to let the free market work. Keep the government out of it.

There’s not much “keeping the government out of it,” however, when they deliberately use government to flood the labor market with new, underage workers who are willing to work for low wages and little or no health insurance benefits.

This is a fact: the minimum wage hasn’t been raised in Iowa since 2008. That’s 15 years ago. Have the prices Iowans pay for things they buy stayed the same since 2008?

Of course not. Since then, inflation has subtracted 35-40 cents from the buying power of every dollar earned. Corporate profits have sky-rocketed, up 25% last year alone over the year before, and the highest they have been in 70 years, according to Bloomberg News and other analysts.

The minimum wage, which helps drive other wage rates, remains stuck in Iowa in a time warp where it is always 2008.

A lot of folks have decided they can do better in the gig economy and no longer want the low paying jobs a lot of employers offer. Others have moved to other states with higher wage rates. Others don’t want to work in places that don’t take proper Covid precautions, especially when those same companies offer little or no health insurance benefits.

So, Iowa has a shortage of available labor. Largely self created, in my view.

There were a couple of paths available if Iowa’s Republican state legislature and governor wanted to do something to ease the state’s labor shortage. (1) let the labor market work, raise the minimum wage, and allow higher wages to rise to a competitive level that would attract the newly limited supply of workers; or (2) use government to intervene and flood the market workers willing to accept low wages and little or no benefits, a choice that will keep wages artificially low.

Of course, they chose the latter. They were even willing to use our kids - to put them at risk - in order to bypass normal market pressures for higher wages.

Imagine this scenario:

In 2008, a Dad, who earns the $7.25 an hour minimum, wage drives his wife to the hospital where she gives birth to a baby.

In 2023, that same baby is now nearly 16, at which point he or she will be old enough to drive Dad and Mom anywhere. If Dad is still being paid the minimum wage, it is still $7.25 an hour, even though enough time has passed for the child to grow from a new born infant to nearly old enough to be a licensed driver.

That is absurd.

Rolling back labor protections for kids is a bad idea for many reasons. One that hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves is that it distorts the labor market by using government to intervene in the labor market to keep wages low.

It’s not only poor policy, it reveals one more facet of the rampant hypocrisy and poor policy choices of Republicans in the legislature and in the governor’s office for all to see.

Barry Piatt’s weekly column is part of the Iowa Writer’s Collaborative (IWC), which links some of Iowa’s best writers and thinkers directly with readers. The IWC, like this column, is a reader supported, so, please check out the columns listed below and consider becoming a free or paid subscriber to any or all of them.

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