Louisiana GOP pushes to repeal mandatory lunch breaks for child workers

Republicans in Louisiana are cracking down on the scourge of child laborers taking breaks for lunch.

The New Orleans Advocate reports that the Louisiana House Labor and Industrial Relations panel on Thursday voted to repeal a law that mandates employers give underage workers time to take lunch breaks, while also passing a bill to cut the amount of time in which laid off workers can collect unemployment aid.

That's not all, as the panel also approved a bill that "would change how workers' compensation wages are calculated in ways that could reduce benefits received by some injured laborers," according to the New Orleans Advocate.

The child labor law repeal is being pushed by Louisiana State Rep. Roger Wilder, who is the owner of multiple Smoothie King franchises and who claims that his own child employees are requesting to work without taking a break to eat something.

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Wilder also hit back at critics who say that his bill would allow the exploitation of children.

"Give me a break," he said. "These are young adults.”

Louisiana is not the only state where Republican legislators in recent months have been waging a war on lunch breaks.

A bill that began advancing through the Kentucky state legislature earlier this year would strip the rights to lunch breaks for workers in the state.

That bill's sponsor, Kentucky GOP State Rep. Phillip Pratt, similarly blew off concerns that workers would be denied the right to eat lunch during their shifts unless employers were compelled to do so.

“In today's work environment, to say someone's not going to offer you a lunch break is ludicrous,” Pratt said. “Trust me, you're going to offer lunch breaks, you're going to offer breaks, you're gonna do all that."