Let’s Play Labor Law Opposition BINGO

Paying workers for their labor → Economic disaster

Yesterday, the Department of Labor expanded the scope of the nation’s overtime policy, extending eligibility for overtime pay to 4.2 million Americans. It’s a decision that’s expected to funnel about $12 billion back into the pockets of working people over the next 10 years.

Hooray! Money for working people!

That’s basically what everyone—the left, the right, and even the Trump—has been saying needs to happen. People need to be working, and they need to be making money. Americans need jobs that can pay them enough money to survive and thrive.

And under the old overtime rule, which promised time-and-a-half only to people making less than $23,660, lots of people who had good jobs still weren’t getting paid for all of the work they were doing even when they worked longer hours like Jeb! Bush advised. A 2014 Gallup poll found that the average American work week was actually 47 hours, meaning the average worker was logging almost almost an entire extra work day each week and not being paid squat for it.

What, then, could possibly be the problem with a law which literally just mandates that more people should not have to work for free?

“This regulation hurts the very people it alleges to help,” said Eddie Munster Doppelgänger / House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) about the law, which he called “an absolute disaster for our economy.”

If that sounds like a familiar criticism, you’re not incorrect. Looking historically at how the right has fought labor laws—from paying women equally to ending child labor to raising the minimum wage—it’s clear that Ryan probably found his statement by digging out Ye Olde Bag of Wage Suppression Tactics, shutting his eyes, and fishing one out.

No seriously, it’s the same thing that labor law opponents have said about basically every single law that we now take completely for granted as a necessary protection, including but not limited to:

Basic worker safeguards. Following the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in 1913, which killed close to 150 people, business groups in New York testified that updates to the fire code that would help workers safely evacuate a building would be responsible for “wiping out” the entire garment industry.

The Equal Pay Act. An article entitled “When Women Get Paid as Much as Men” cautioned that the 1963 act, which would mandate that employers pay women as much as men, would result in massive job losses.

“Millions of women will get pay raises over the next years,” the author wrote, “but countless others are in danger of losing their jobs.”

The ADA. Though the Americans with Disabilities Act is hailed as a bipartisan victory (it was passed by Republicans!), it still faced opposition from business interests, who were convinced that having to put in wheelchair ramps would destroy local economies; the Chamber of Commerce noted that it would have “a disastrous impact on many small businesses struggling to survive.”

The minimum wage. And of course, there’s the minimum wage, which has been predicted to spell doom and gloom for “the very people it’s designed to help” basically since it was written in the 1930s in spite of the fact that there’s no evidence of those claims ever coming true:

So it’s really no surprise that this policy change—one which will increase the purchasing power of millions of Americans who, statistically, will spend that money on things like food and gas and housing and clothing and other things that fuel economies which, in turn, will increase demand for the goods and services they make and sell at work—is drawing the same kind of opposition, because evidently, it’s the only thing they’ve got.

And you can bet we’ll hear really, really similar opposition to other upcoming labor laws, like Seattle’s impending secure scheduling rule, which could require employers to give their workers their schedules in advance.

We might as well have a little fun with it, then, so here’s a BINGO card I made.

You can play along the next time Speaker Ryan or any other labor law opponent decides to pipe up about how paying workers more or giving them the most basic of rights (like paid sick leave, which basically every other developed country mandates) decides to pull one out of the hat.