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The Wisconsin bill would mean kids who can’t legally buy alcohol – or in some
states even drive a car – would be allowed to serve hard drinks to customers at
bars and restaurants. Photograph: Chandan Khanna/AFP/Getty Images
The Wisconsin bill would mean kids who can’t legally buy alcohol – or in some
states even drive a car – would be allowed to serve hard drinks to customers at
bars and restaurants. Photograph: Chandan Khanna/AFP/Getty Images
Child labour



‘I CAN’T BELIEVE WE’RE HAVING THIS CONVERSATION’: THE STATES PUSHING FOR
14-YEAR-OLDS TO SERVE ALCOHOL

As Republican-led states roll back the alcohol service age so teens can serve
hard drinks, they also put them in danger


Wilfred Chan
Mon 31 Jul 2023 11.00 BSTLast modified on Mon 31 Jul 2023 18.22 BST
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In the small town of Freedom, Wisconsin, Buzz’s Pub and Grill – a local sports
bar whose logo features frothing beer mugs in the colors of the American flag –
has been short-staffed since the pandemic. Jeff Baker, the owner, says he “could
use one more bartender, and probably two more cooks”. He hasn’t found takers in
over a year of running “help wanted” ads, so he’s made do by working extra
shifts in the kitchen and paring back the menu.

Baker could soon get more job applicants thanks to a new proposal that would
lower Wisconsin’s minimum age for alcohol service to just 14 years old. It would
“absolutely” be a welcome change if children applied, he says. “Not as many kids
work as much as they used to. Back in our day, more kids were needed, and more
parents made their kids work.”


Iowa state senate votes to allow children to work longer hours and serve alcohol
Read more

Wisconsin is just one of a growing number of states where predominantly
Republican lawmakers are making quiet moves to roll back the alcohol service
age, so that kids who can’t legally buy alcohol – or in Wisconsin’s case, even
drive a car – would be allowed to serve hard drinks to customers at bars and
restaurants. In addition to alleviating the labor shortage, lawmakers behind the
bills argue letting kids serve alcohol would give them valuable work experience.

That’s left some opponents of the bills at a loss for words. “It’s bizarre. I
can’t believe that we’re even having this conversation,” says Ryan Clancy, a
Democratic state legislator who represents parts of Milwaukee, where he also
owns an entertainment center that serves alcohol. He’s seen how drunk customers
can harass workers, and “the idea that we would expose Wisconsin’s children to
harassment through this is just unconscionable. It’s not only an erosion of
labor, but our willingness to protect our kids.”

Until recently, every US state required a worker serving alcohol in a bar or
restaurant to be at least 18 to 21. These minimums in part reflect the legacy of
the movement to end child labor in the 20th century, says Betsy Wood, a
historian of child labor at Bard Early College.

But according to a report published last week by the Economic Policy Institute,
at least seven states have enacted laws to lower their alcohol service age since
2021, including West Virginia and Iowa, which lowered the minimum age to 16, and
Michigan, which lowered it to 17. The bills are backed by restaurant lobbying
groups as part of a broader effort to loosen child labor laws “to cut labor
costs and deregulate employment”, the report writes – at a time when child labor
violations are on the rise across the country.

In recent years, investigations have found hundreds of children working in jobs
that are officially classified as hazardous under federal labor law, from auto
parts factories in Alabama to meatpacking plants in Nebraska and Minnesota. But
there are no explicit federal prohibitions on children working in bars, despite
the dangers there.

Most bartenders and restaurant servers in the US are female, and research has
found that the vast majority of female servers have experienced on-the-job
sexual harassment, at rates higher than nearly any other industry. The danger is
even higher when workers aren’t paid a living wage.


In every state lowering its alcohol service age, servers can legally be paid
less than the minimum wage and expected to make up the difference with tips.
Photograph: Maureen McLean/Rex/Shutterstock

A 2014 study by the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, a labor advocacy
organization, found that servers experience significantly more sexual harassment
in states where they can be legally paid less than the minimum wage and expected
to make up the difference with tips – “creating an environment in which a
majority female workforce must please and curry favor with customers to learn a
living”, the report said. “Depending on customers’ tips for wages discourages
workers who might otherwise stand up for their rights and report unwanted sexual
behaviors.”

These sub-minimum wages are legal in every state that’s now lowering its alcohol
service age: in Iowa, the so-called tipped minimum wage is $4.35 an hour. In
Michigan, it’s $3.84, and in Wisconsin, it’s just $2.33.

American children are working hazardous jobs – and it’s about to get worse
Robert Reich

Read more

Throw teenage girls into that mix, and the risk for abuse becomes clear, says
Wood, the child labor historian. “The double whammy of sub-minimum wages and
sexual harassment is already challenging for adults to navigate, much less
children who are uniquely vulnerable.”

But the bills’ supporters say there’s nothing to worry about. Each proposed bill
is different, some say children can only serve drinks but not make them, some
say they may only do so at venues that also serve food and others demand they be
supervised by someone over 18.

One Wisconsin legislator trying to lower the alcohol service age to 14 is Chanz
Green, a Republican who owns a tavern himself and denies that his bill is
rolling back child labor laws. In Wisconsin’s proposal, “the drinks are still
being made by a licensed bartender. And there is still the responsibility of the
bartender and the employer to supervise their employees,” he told the Guardian
in an email. “[The bill] would just allow servers, who are already working in a
restaurant capacity, to bring alcoholic beverages to the table they are
serving.”

Baker, the Buzz’s Pub and Grill owner, says “it’s up to me as a business owner
to make sure I’m enforcing the rules,” and believes the bill wouldn’t expose
kids to any situations they wouldn’t otherwise be in. “I’m a firm believer that
if kids want to drink alcohol, they’re going to get a hold of it,” he says.

In Michigan, Scott Ellis, the executive director of the Michigan Licensed
Beverage Association, the lobbying group that helped pass the state’s new
alcohol service age law, says: “Since the bill became law, we have not heard of
any issues from our members or from other alcohol-related groups or
organizations that would track cases of abuse or exploitation.”

The Iowa Republican state representative Shannon Lundgren, who owns Iowa’s
Trackside Bar and Grill, says her daughters grew up working with her in the
restaurant, and that lowering the alcohol service age would allow “minor family
members to play a more active role” in Iowa’s family-run businesses. She
disputes the idea that teens could be put at special risk of sexual assault by
serving alcohol. “The environment isn’t the crime … the person who sexually
assaults a person has committed the crime,” she told the Guardian in an email.

Lundgren added that in Iowa’s law any 16- or 17-year-old serving alcohol would
have to get “parent-signed permission, with proper training and on-site
supervision”, and would not be able to prepare drinks under the new law. “Prior
to passing this law, same-aged minors could work in convenience or grocery
stores and sell alcohol to legal-aged patrons. This is simply mirroring what is
already being done in other industries, with additional guardrails.”

> When it comes to bars, we’ve seen the data show over and over again that the
> presence of alcohol does create risk of sexual assault for all people working
> in that environment

Megan Srinivas

But the Democratic state representative Megan Srinivas says those guardrails
were actually added by Iowa’s outnumbered left flank, who negotiated additional
amendments to try to protect the teen workers before voting against the final
bill. Its original version did not require teenagers to be supervised while
serving alcohol at all – with the amendments, they’ll have to be supervised by
at least two adults. Democrats also added an amendment requiring any minor who
gets a job serving alcohol to undergo “training on prevention and response to
sexual harassment”.

“There’s a reason we’ve always said minors are at higher risk of assault in
certain environments.” Srinivas says. “And that’s what [the new law is] opening
the door to. When it comes to bars, we’ve seen the data show over and over again
that the presence of alcohol does create risk of sexual assault for all people
working in that environment.”

US investigation uncovers two 10-year-olds working at Kentucky McDonald’s
Read more

And for a Republican legislature that’s passed bill after bill restricting
LGBTQ+ rights, banning books, and targeting teachers and librarians over fears
of “grooming”, it’s absurd that they would then send teenagers to serve alcohol
in bars, Srinivas says. “This literally creates the perfect scenario for
somebody to be groomed. It’s underage person working in a setting with alcohol,
often under-supervised.”

According to the Economic Policy Institute, the driving force behind these bills
are restaurant industry groups, like the National Restaurant Association and its
state affiliates, “that benefit from child labor in the food and beverage and
restaurant industries”. Their goal, the report argues, is to avoid raising wages
and improving working conditions, and to fix a temporary problem – the labor
shortage – “with permanent changes to labor laws that allow employers to replace
adult workers with lower-paid youth in increasingly dangerous jobs”. (The
National Restaurant Association did not respond to an emailed request for
comment.)

Clancy, the Milwaukee state representative, sees the bills as a “weird game of
one-upmanship in terms of how horrific the state Republicans can be”. But they
also represent missed opportunities to do the things that could actually fix the
labor shortage’s root causes.

“We could talk daycare; we could talk paid parental leave; we could talk about
encouraging employers in a myriad of ways to hire folks that were recently
incarcerated; we could stop incarcerating so many people,” he says. “Yet in
2023, they’re bringing back child labor. It is just maddening.”

Topics
 * Child labour

 * Food & drink industry
 * Alcohol
 * Republicans
 * Wisconsin
 * Iowa
 * West Virginia
 * features

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