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THE PRICE WE PAY FOR HAVING UPPER-CLASS LEGISLATORS  
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Jamelle Bouie
April 30, 2024
New York Times
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_ There is a coordinated, nationwide effort to roll back child labor
laws, part of a broader campaign to concentrate even more power into
the hands of employers. _

A movement to weaken child labor laws has roots in the composition of
our legislatures., Lewis W. Hine

 

There is a coordinated, nationwide effort to roll back child labor
laws, part of a broader campaign to concentrate even more power into
the hands of employers.

“Since 2021,” the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute notes
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“28 states have introduced bills to weaken child labor laws, and 12
states have enacted them.” In 2024 alone, eight states have either
introduced or taken new action on bills that would, for example, allow
employers to schedule 16- and 17-year-olds for unlimited hours, allow
nonprofits to hire 12- and 13-year-olds and eliminate work permits for
young people.

One way to understand this fight to roll back labor laws is as a
function of conservative ideology and a reflection of the views of the
social base of Republican politics. It’s almost axiomatic that a
party dominated by reactionary business owners
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going to support, as much as possible, the interests of reactionary
business owners.

But this analysis can take us only so far. We also have to explain why
it is, on a practical level, that this agenda has advanced so far and
so fast. There is partisan control, of course — Republicans are
leading the assault on labor laws — but there is also the class
composition of our state legislatures.

Out of more than 7,300 state legislators in the country, 116 — or
1.6 percent of the total — currently work or last worked in manual
labor, the service industry or clerical or union jobs, according to a
recent study
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by Nicholas Carnes and Eric Hansen, political scientists at Duke
University and Loyola University Chicago. By contrast, about 50
percent of U.S. workers hold jobs in one of those fields.

This problem afflicts both parties. In the last legislative session,
the study found, 1 percent of Republican lawmakers and 2 percent of
Democratic lawmakers had working-class backgrounds. In 10 states —
Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oregon, South
Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Virginia — not a single state
lawmaker works or has recently worked in an occupation that
researchers would define as working class. Three of those states,
incidentally, are ones in which lawmakers recently loosened rules on
child labor.

What explains the almost total absence of working-class people from
elected positions in state government? It may have something to do
with how we structure our legislatures. Let’s look at Congress as a
base line. The House and Senate are full-time legislatures with
considerable staffs and resources at their disposal. Members work
through the year and are paid accordingly: $174,000 per annum, with
pay increases for those in leadership positions.

Now, there is a case to make that Congress needs more staff and higher
pay — that to attract the best candidates for federal office,
compensation should be competitive with salaries in private-sector
fields of similar power, prestige and responsibility. The main point,
however, is that Congress is at least structured in a way that would
make it possible for a working-class person to do the job without
jeopardizing his or her financial security (although this still leaves
us with the problem of actually winning a seat).

You cannot say the same for most of our state legislatures. According
to the
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Conference of State Legislatures, only 10 states have full-time
legislatures, in which lawmakers spend at least 84 percent of their
time engaged in the position, including on the legislative floor, in
hearings and in committee meetings and doing constituent service. They
are paid full-time salaries as well, with average annual compensation
of about $82,000. On the other end, there are 14 states where the job
is essentially part-time and lawmakers are paid accordingly, earning
an average salary of just over $18,000 a year. The remaining states
are classified as hybrid legislatures, in which lawmakers devote about
74 percent of their time to legislative duties, with an average annual
salary around $41,000.

Setting aside the difficulty of getting elected — the necessity of
raising money from wealthy friends, family and acquaintances that most
Americans simply do not have — if working-class people of modest
means somehow won state legislative positions, they would almost
certainly have to sacrifice a large part of their incomes to do so.
Our legislatures are not built to allow working people to participate
as members. Neither, for that matter, is our political system writ
large.

It is not too difficult to imagine the changes that might make our
elected institutions, including Congress, more inclusive of working
people. We would need, for example, a stronger and more robust system
of campaign finance. We would need resources to move more legislatures
to full-time status, including funds for more staff and higher
salaries. And we would need the kinds of accommodations that, frankly,
all Americans deserve: child care, housing and good health insurance.

The problem is that all of this runs counter to our ingrained
hostility to politics and politicians — our cynical distrust of,
even contempt for, people who choose to make a career of elected
office. We don’t want to raise their pay or give them more of what
they need to do their jobs well; we want to cut as much as we can and
impose term limits while we’re at it.

In this way, we get the legislatures — and legislators — that we
pay for: a whole lot of wealthy people interested in pursuing their
own goals and not much else.

_JAMELLE BOUIE became a New York Times Opinion columnist in 2019.
Before that he was the chief political correspondent for Slate
magazine. He is based in Charlottesville, Va., and
Washington. @jbouie [[link removed]]_

_A version of this article appears in print on May 5, 2024,
Section SR, Page 3 of the New York edition with the headline: The
Price We Pay for Rich Lawmakers._

* democracy
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* class
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* elections
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* child labor
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