Illinois labor law discriminates against teenagers - HB 5141 would fix it
Here is a video put out by UFCW on the bipartisan legislation (HB 5141) that eliminates age discrimination against teenagers in Illinois labor law. It's got a nice Ocean's 13 beat. It passed the House last week and should be the law of the land. I hope the Senate passes it as well, because teenagers should not be paid less than anyone else for doing the same work (and the bill would eliminate that particular piece of age discrimination in labor law).
4 comments:
"teenagers should not be paid less than anyone else for doing the same work"
Why not? Have you ever hired a teenager? They tend not to come to work, and to come to work hungover and stoned. An employer takes a bigger risk on a teenager than say a 40 year old with a solid work history.
Shouldn't the employer and the employee be the ones who decide what a pay rates are, rather than Emil Jones and Rod Blagojevich?
Teenagers are the exact people that should be exempted from minimum wage laws. Teenagers need job training and may or may not be as skilled as other workers with more time in the work force.
I have more sympathy on a low skilled or even if skilled in blue collar minimum wage (or white collar minimum wage offices sometimes are) that has a family to find, albeit not from an economic viewpoint per se (except maybe a Henry Ford trickle down perspective), but an equitable viewpoint--at least moreso than teenagers.
It is not "discrimination" (as in bad, bigotted but it certainly discriminates) to have lower wages based on age (as in teenagers in High School, in school, part time, need job experience, and may have low skills)
It is a very edifying experience for most teenagers to deliver newspapers, mow lawns, clean pools, clean out roof gutters, work retail stores, bag groceries at food stores, move boxes, camp counselors for smaller kids, missionary work, service work, Church related work, Government related work, Boy Scout service and pay camp counselors, movie attendant, car cleaning, summer jobs--all of which could be below minimum wage for teenagers---a distinction for teenagers (or at least work permit 15 to emancipated adult at 18) is reasonable, logical and probably beneficial.
Dan,
what do you think about the post above you on teenagers murdering teenagers and the tale of 2 cities.
It seems that Daley focuses on buildings and grand projects and the downtown and lakefront and forgets about the other city, the true inner city and not just the urban core as a playground for the rich with high end residential housing, and no middle income housing let alone low income housing.
and clearly more gun control laws don't work--that may be part of the answer but not the answer
and Daley also recruited directly or probably indirectly gang members and thugs and drug dealers and murderers into his various loyal ward organizations (like Ike Carothers) or floating thug organizations like Don Tomczak, Dan Katalinic and Tim Degnan's HDO.
The idea seems to be that teenagers are dumb, lazy, incompetent or, at best, just inexperienced, and therefore they should be paid less than the minimum wage.
That seems a little bit like the soft bigotry of low expectations. We ought to expect that teenagers can do the same work for the same pay as adults. And what they lack in experience they make up for in vigor and energy.
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