Not saying its as bad as the bolded but some in Missouri may be okay with things close to it:

rjoefish, please explain what's wrong with letting 14 or 15 year olds get a job.

I had my first job at 15 in a grocery store.

Which, by the way, was unionized and I had $19 come out of every single paycheck (weekly) for union dues.

I personally pay my kids (8 and 11) to do things related to my business sometimes. A nickel or a dime for putting product in bags while sitting on the living room floor, for instance. He buys legos when we go to the store with his money. Am I an evil person?


Edit: After re-reading your quoted article, it seems like you're concerned that we'll have kids under the age of 14 working in hotels.

Okay? So what? Do you really think you'll suddenly find 5th graders staffing all the Marriot's of the country?

We tried that already.

Did I say there was something wrong with it? I worked at Burger King when I was young, under a work permit. I just don't agree with no restrictions or oversight. The part about working them however they want in a resort or hotel as long as there's a bed is pretty lol IMO.

Which state was that in and how long ago? Was it UFCW?

I don't see much of a problem with the majority of this. The only part of that bill I'd take out is:

"It also removes the authority of the director of the Division of Labor Standards to inspect employers who employ children and to require them to keep certain records for children they employ."

I'll play along. What did we try already?

"You can't treat the working man this way! One of these days we'll form a union, and get the fair and equitable treatment we deserve! Then we'll go too far, and become corrupt and shiftless, and the Japanese will eat us alive!"

I'm guessing they'd use Chinese if they wrote the same joke today.

Wisconsin, and we're talking mid-late 90's here.

I have no clue what the union was. IIRC, there was just a paper that I had to sign that said "blah blah blah, union will do blah blah blah $19 per week blah blah blah" and that was my only exposure to it.

I worked there for like 18 months and wound up getting fired for not punching out on a 2 hour lunch with my buddies.

We all got canned for it. We loaded a bunch of shopping carts into the boss's truck on our way out. Very immature. It's what kids do.

My current boss has funny union stories about his days working in Michigan.

He worked as a programmer for a heavily unionized company and if say a light bulb went out you had to call someone to come change it. You could get into trouble if you changed it yourself.

One developer got in trouble for carrying around a pocket screwdriver set. There were official screwdriver guys you were supposed to call.

See, see, union workers get fired ALL THE TIME!!!

If only we'd listened to that young man instead of walling him inside an empty coke oven...

Just to be clear, he has not threatened use the guard against anyone, he has stated if the state workers strike he will use the guard to provide basic services, like collecting garbage.

Garbage men with M16's though. Very police-state.

*cough* private garbage collection ftw *cough*

The reason this is concerning to him is that his union members would have to compete with them for jobs.