Labor & Employment Law

Senator Claims U.S. Child Labor Laws Unconstitutional

By James Parks

Children working in factories, picking crops and hauling lumber on construction sites is a vision Mike Lee, the Republican senator from Utah, apparently wants to make a reality again in the United States. In a lecture on his YouTube channel, Lee explains in great detail why he believes U.S. child labor laws are unconstitutional.

In Lee’s view, the federal government doesn?t have authority to enact federal minimum wage laws, civil rights laws or to provide Medicare and Social Security.

Lee?s diatribe shows just how determined he and his ilk are to fight the gains workers have made. And we must be as determined to stop them, AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker said. Speaking yesterday to the federation?s annual King Day celebration, she said:

We must protect Social Security and Medicare, and we need jobs. We must put our people back to work, to build an economy built on shared, broad-based prosperity.

And there is only one way we can prevail?and that is together.  We can only succeed if we are ?greater than 1.?  We can only succeed if we harness the strength of our numbers. 

Lee is one of the  ?tenthers??conservatives who say federal laws and rules like the minimum wage, Medicare, Social Security, unemployment insurance, the Department of Education and a laundry list of other federal laws and programs are unconstitutional.

They argue that if a federal power is not specifically spelled out in the Constitution, the government doesn?t have it, according to their view of the 10^th Amendment.

 As Ian Millhiser points out on Think Progress:

Lee?s call for a return to failed constitutional vision that spawned the Great Depression is obviously wrong. The Constitution gives Congress the power ?[t]o regulate commerce?among the several states,? and to ?make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution? this power to regulate commerce. Even ultraconservative Justice Antonin Scalia agrees that these powers give Congress broad authority to regulate ?economic activity? such as hiring and firing.

 Check out Millhiser?s column and Lee?s video here.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on January 14, 2011 (boomark / email).