Now they want to get rid of lunch breaks?!

[xerox78]

Lunch breaks on the chopping block
Bill would leave it up to employersMark MacKenzie, the state's AFL-CIO president, yesterday told Rep. JR Hoell of Dunbarton to give him a break

Comments

[rimpala]

I don't understand people wanting to get rid of regulations because "Oh they'll do the right thing!"

Um, no.

[nothingmuch]

Considering that plenty of business owners have been perfectly happy to use slave labor, "they'll do the right thing" is about as ignorant as it gets.

[rimpala]

It's a particularly dangerous line of thought

Like, maybe we should get rid of the voting system because the government will "do the right thing."

I never trust authority, never.

[roseofjuly]

Not to mention that history is RIGHT THERE to prove them wrong. I mean, there's a reason we passed the law in the first place.

[kiri_l]

The simple fact that it is even brought up as an issue - one to be revoked at the discretion of an employer (who would of course NOT skip their own meal) - indicates that it would be denied.

This is getting BEYOND idiotic.

[dark_puck]

Can we make it a requirement that in order to be an elected official you must have worked at least a year in a minimum wage job?

[kiri_l]

Oh I think at least that, and preferably have had experience in a factory ot other intensive manual labor setting - and I don't mean as a CEO or even a supervisor.

[emofordino]

no, they won't do the right thing. shit, a lot of employers STILL don't do the right thing even though there are laws dictating that they must! i remember working at bob evan's as a hostess, and then later as a server. i would work 8, 10, sometimes even 12 hours straight without even getting a 15 minute break, let alone a lunch break! i would go home dizzy and shaky because i had been running around all day on the breakfast i ate before i had to show up for work. when i was a server i got a break more frequently (but not regularly by any means, maybe like 1 of my 3-4 shifts during the week.)

we really don't need to give employers MORE ways to take advantage of their employees.

[ceilidh]

When I was in college I worked at a nice, dinner-only restaurant. We had to get there at 3 pm and set up, then from 4 to about 4:30 we all ate dinner together, then we cleaned up. Then from 5 until like, 1 am or later (whenever people stopped drinking and went home), we worked straight through. No sitting down, no bathroom break, no NOTHING, and their argument was we didn't need a break since we had dinner for 30 minutes at 4 pm so we should be able to go the next 8 hours without stopping. and it was a BUSY restaurant.

[kyakki]

tmi - but how could they pull that off if they ever hired women? I know it is different for everyone, but when it is that time of the month? I could not go for more than a few hours between a quick stop in the restroom without Embarrasing Problems.

[ceilidh]

oh yeah, that was fun. ALL the waitstaff was female, all the cookstaff was male (it was a type of restaurant where your food is cooked at your table). So the chefs, when they weren't actually AT the tables, got to chill in the back. Waitstaff was always on duty and god forbid if we weren't RIGHT THERE at the table if the chefs needed something they forgot. Anyway, if we needed to sneak a bathroom break, we'd have to beg another waitress to keep an eye on our tables so we could run to the bathroom for 2 minutes. You didn't want to be gone long because you didn't want the chefs at your tables to notice you weren't there. Usually that worked, but we had to go through where the chefs were in the kitchen to get to the bathroom and if they saw too many people going through there they would tattle on us to the owner

[blinkidybah]

sometimes I feel like this country's been transported back to 1905, wtf

[mirhanda]

I know it's so crazy! They want to bring back child labor and do away with all protections for workers. WTF is going on?

And idiots still say "we don't need unions anymore there are laws to protect us!" GAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!