Rep. Torr has introduced HB 1083 which addresses certain child labor law issues. Current child labor laws have certain exemptions for when a child is working for the child’s parents. This bill would expand those exemptions for cases where the child works for a legal entity solely owned by the child’s parents. For example, the parents set up an LLC to shield themselves from personal liability. My only problem with this has to do with the one way nature of the corporate shield and not so much with child labor in particular.
It seems that, lately, I’m seeing an effort to allow the individual owner’s rights to pierce the corporate shield while still preventing liability from piercing the shield and getting back at the owner. In this case, there is a common sense notion that parents should be able to decide what’s good for their kids. But if, say, an overworked kid negligently harmed a third party in the course of his or her employment with the LLC, would the injured party be entitled to pierce the corporate veil and get at the parents’ individual bank accounts for compensation? I doubt it. (I probably wouldn’t even note this except for a more politically charged issue where the religious beliefs of corporate owners are being allowed to pierce the corporate veil for purposes of allowing the corporation to resist the Obamacare contraception mandate.)
The bill also expands the hours a kid between the ages of 14-16 can work – from 7 p.m. under current law to 9 p.m. on a school night, 10 p.m. on a non-school night, and 11 p.m. during the summer. It also increases the maximum hours for working on a school day from 3 hours up to 4 hours.
Finally, the bill provides for civil penalties for violations of employment certificate violations, hazardous occupation violations, and age violations of the child labor law. The House Labor Committee passed the bill, and it is now ready for Second Reading.
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