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.
Iowa Writers’ Collaborative Columnists
Laura Belin: Iowa Politics with Laura Belin, Windsor Heights
Doug Burns: The Iowa Mercury, Carroll
Dave Busiek: Dave Busiek on Media, Des Moines
Art Cullen: Art Cullen’s Notebook, Storm Lake
Suzanna de Baca Dispatches from the Heartland, Huxley
Debra Engle: A Whole New World, Madison County
Julie Gammack: Julie Gammack’s Iowa Potluck, Des Moines and Okoboji
Joe Geha: Fern and Joe, Ames
Jody Gifford: Benign Inspiration, West Des Moines
Nik Heftman, The Seven Times, Iowa and California
Beth Hoffman: In the Dirt, Lovilla
Dana James: New Black Iowa, Des Moines
Pat Kinney: View from Cedar Valley, Waterloo
Fern Kupfer: Fern and Joe, Ames
Robert Leonard: Deep Midwest: Politics and Culture, Bussey
Tar Macias: Hola Iowa, Iowa
Kurt Meyer, Showing Up, St. Ansgar
Kyle Munson, Kyle Munson’s Main Street, Des Moines
Jane Nguyen, The Asian Iowan, West Des Moines
John Naughton: My Life, in Color, Des Moines
Chuck Offenburger: Iowa Boy Chuck Offenburger, Jefferson and Des Moines
Barry Piatt: Piatt on Politics Behind the Curtain, Washington, D.C.
Macy Spensley, The Creative Midwesterner, Davenport/Des Moines
Mary Swander: Mary Swander’s Buggy Land, Kalona
Mary Swander: Mary Swander’s Emerging Voices, Kalona
Cheryl Tevis: Unfinished Business, Boone County
Ed Tibbetts: Along the Mississippi, Davenport
Teresa Zilk: Talking Good, Des Moines
To receive a weekly roundup of all Iowa Writers’ Collaborative columnists, sign up here (free): ROUNDUP COLUMN
We are proud to have an alliance with Iowa Capital Dispatch
I have taught school for 30 years. To me the most offensive part of this bill is allowing children who have been in school all day and need to do homework, study, sleep, get ready for the next school day, to work a 6 hour shift at night. How are they going to stay awake in class, let alone learn anything?
The last minimum wage increase in Iowa actually happened in January 2007! It was the first bill the Democratic-controlled legislature sent to Governor Chet Culver.
Inexcusable that it hasn't been raised since then. And in 2017 the GOP trifecta made it illegal for local governments to pass minimum wage increases.