It may be hard to remember, but West Virginia used to be a relatively normal place to live, with a functioning state government. Those days are gone, and the statehouse is a MAGA wasteland. I wrote before about how the legislature legalized prosecuting librarians for possession of pornography, and passed a women’s equal rights bill that was a thin cover for transphobic behavior. And on Tuesday, the House of Delegates voted to weaken child labor protections.
14 and 15 year olds can work in WV if their work permits are approved. This is a detailed process with multiple layers of approval:
How do I obtain an application for a work permit or age certificate?
Instead of having two separate forms, work permit and age certificate forms now serve as both the application and the issued permit and/or certificate. For work permits, Sections A, B, and C of the form are to be completed by the employer, parent, and school registrar. Once that information is obtained, the minor takes the completed form, along with proof of age, to someone authorized to issue work permits. Once the form is reviewed by an issuing officer and approved, that individual will complete Section D and issue the work permit using the same form. The same applies to age certificates. The form is completed by the prospective employer and the minor. Once completed, the minor takes the completed form, along with proof of age, to someone authorized to issue age certificates. Once reviewed and approved, that individual will issue the age certificate using the same form.
It seems pretty reasonable to me. I’m not sure how anyone could have a problem with it, to be honest.
Well, as it turns out this push in West Virginia, and in other states where extremists also control the state government, has been organized by an outside group, The Foundation for Government Accountability, based in—you guessed it—Florida, the extremist paradise. The main thrust of the FGA’s work is to remove the government’s layer—usually the school system—from the approval process so parents are free to take their kids out of school and put them to work. And it also makes it much easier for people looking to exploit undocumented migrant kids.
But of course that’s not what legislators say. For them, it’s all about the parents. Oh won’t someone think of the parents!
The bill’s lead sponsor, Del. Michael Hite, R-Berkeley, said his goal is to take the school system out of the decision-making process for students seeking to work and give it to parents.
“I think that should be a parent’s decision,” Hite said. “And I would rather see it rest with the parents. There are a lot of things that kids do that they don’t have to get permission from a principal or somebody in the school, that their parents every day make those decisions for them. So this is just one more thing that I think should be with the parents and their decision.”
Give me a break. The push to put 14 and 15 year olds is meant to depress labor costs by adding a pool of workers who can be paid at the bottom of the scale and to keep kids uneducated because an uneducated population is easier to control. It’s just like the bill that pretends to keep porn out of WV libraries—it’s really meant to keep kids from reading books that go beyond the narrow extremist narrative and getting ideas about how things could be different.
And it’s not only West Virginia. The MAGA Republic of Duh stretches across the country. There’s a lot of work that needs to be done to clean up this mess.
Kids should be allowed to be kids. Joni’s got this:
