With the Trump administration and Florida officials cracking down on illegal immigration, state lawmakers are proposing a solution to the resulting labor shortage — more teenagers on more payrolls for longer hours.
Democrats and business groups are warning that mass deportations could further exasperate existing staffing shortages. In January, a board member of the National Restaurant Association, Sam Sanchez, warned against the deportations, saying America “currently faces a workforce shortage of 1.7 million people,” and the removal of migrants will only make it worse.
To solve the issue, Governor DeSantis and Republican state lawmakers are proposing some tweaks to labor laws to increase the hours teenagers can work in an effort to increase the pool of available labor.
On Tuesday, the state Senate’s Commerce and Tourism committee voted 5-4 to advance a bill that would eliminate restrictions on the hours 16- and 17-year-olds can work.
The legislation would eliminate the current prohibitions on teenagers in those age ranges working between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. on school nights. It would also scrap the state’s ban on teenagers working more than eight hours a day when they have school the next day or more than 30 hours per week when school is in session.
Additionally, it would lift restrictions on 14- and 15-year-olds who are homeschooled or go to virtual schools.
The head of the left-leaning Florida Policy Institute, Sadaf Knight, opposed the legislation, saying, “If lawmakers want to prioritize the health, safety, and education of Florida youth, they will reject any further undoing of child labor protections.”
The FPI said it estimates the bill could “impact over 110,000 Florida youth in the labor force, including over 60,000 teens aged 16 and 17 who are juggling work and school demands.” It also raised concerns with a portion of the bill that eliminates a rule requiring businesses to give 16 and 17-year-olds at least a half-hour meal break after four hours of work. The institute says it could lead to teenagers working “without breaks” at all instead of working a little longer before they get a break.
However, Republicans have pushed back on the dire predictions of the impact on teenage workers. The sponsor of the bill, state Senator Jay Collins, said at a hearing that the work environments for teenagers are dramatically different than the hazardous and exploitative conditions children faced at the turn of the 20th century in America.
“Frankly, we’re not talking about ‘The Jungle’ by Upton Sinclair,” Mr. Collins said. “We’re talking about them working at Publix and the Piggly Wiggly.”
Mr. DeSantis has expressed support for the idea of turning to teenagers to fill jobs instead of illegal immigrants. He noted that a Florida law requiring employers with more than 25 employees to verify an individual’s immigration status has had some impact on the labor market.
“Yes, we had people that left because of those rules, but you’ve also been able to hire other people. And what’s wrong with expecting our young people to be working part-time now? I mean, that’s how it used to be when I was growing up,” Mr. DeSantis said during a panel discussion with the Trump administration’s border tsar, Tom Homan, last week.
He added, “Why do we say we need to import foreigners, even import them illegally, when, you know, teenagers used to work at these resorts. College students should be able to do this stuff.”
Florida is not the only state where lawmakers are looking to loosen restrictions for teenage workers. Republican state lawmakers in Ohio are also working to change the current 7 p.m. work curfew on school nights for 14- and 15-year-olds to 9 p.m. to help address the labor shortage.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
