Kentucky’s War on Poor and Working People

Every human being deserves to work in dignity and enjoy the fruits of their labor.

Against this fundamental right, Kentucky House Bill 500 was recently passed by the House Small Business and Information Technology Committee. The bill originally proposed to eliminate workers’ right to a lunch break, but this language has since been removed after receiving organized pushback from the Kentucky AFL-CIO. The bill would still remove the requirement of employers in agriculture, retail, restaurant and hospitality industries, where many workers already lack a 40-hour workweek, to pay their workers time-and-a-half for overtime hours. 

Kentucky HB 500 is one link in a massive chain of capitalists working hand-in-hand with the politicians of both major bourgeois political parties, whose campaigns they fund, to better exploit their workforce and extract more profit for themselves at the cost of their workers’ livelihoods.

HB 500 is working through the Kentucky state government on the heels of House Bill 255, a bill stripping away child labor protections. HB 255 allows employers to schedule children for 6+ hour shifts that conflict with their school day, set their work shifts to end past 11 p.m. and exceed the 30 hour workweek limit during the school year. The bill opens avenues to exploit children under the age of 16–who are deemed too young to drive–to work longer hours. Children need to dedicate time towards school, sleep and enjoying their youth for a healthy development. Rather than providing workers a social safety net, capitalists instead want access to a desperate population forced to sell its labor power at a fraction of the value it produces to survive, even at the cost of their childhood. 

Some exploitative labor practices can be deadly. HB 255 would allow teenagers to work in hazardous conditions before they are old enough to vote. Between 2018 and 2022, 57 children 15 years and younger and 68 teens ages 16-17 (totaling 125 children) died from workplace injuries in the US. Kentucky State Representative Phillip Pratt, who owns a landscaping business, tells us HB 255 will help teenagers “gain valuable experience in the workplace.” This cannot be further from the truth. Capitalists profit by exploiting a marginalized workforce, and they want to expand this exploitation to target Kentucky's children.

The Kentucky state government’s backward policy on the poor and working classes is unironically similar to those of England during the Industrial Revolution. On top of rolling back child labor protections, it has introduced Kentucky House Bill 5, an homage to the old English “poor laws,” which, if passed, would further criminalize the unhoused population. Rather than providing a place to sleep and basic protections, KY HB 5 would criminalize homeless encampments and sleeping in cars for extended periods. It would also restrict charitable bail donations to help people who are not convicted to keep their employment and stable housing, create harsher penalties for violent and non-violent crimes, restrict tenant’s rights and introduce mandatory minimum sentencing and an outdated three-strike policy. HB 5 would keep citizens locked up longer for increasingly trivial excuses, restricting civil liberties and putting a significant strain on state resources. The incarceration rate in Kentucky is already 40% higher than the national average. These so-called “tough on crime” measures do not actually deter crime; crowded prisons and long sentences increase crime levels by removing alternative avenues for financial stability. HB 5 was vetoed by Governor Andy Beshear on April 10, but that doesn’t mean it still can’t make its way to being passed. The fact remains that this bill made it all the way to the governor's desk.

A crowded prison does not keep a state safe; it allows capitalists to legally employ an enslaved population to perform labor for pennies–a right protected by the US Constitution in the 13th Amendment: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, shall exist within the United States” (our italics). The legacy of slavery allows prisoners to be employed as slave labor, and this legacy is being legislated out of state curriculum by the very lawmakers upholding it. State governments on behalf of the capitalist class are relentlessly attacking workers’ rights to resist or exist outside their exploitation, and these measures are met with bipartisan support. 

Neither of the two major political parties in the US—who enjoy complete control over the state apparatus—represent the workers’ interests. The class war wages on, and we are losing. It is up to us, the workers, to organize outside of the two major political parties. While the Republican Party openly declares its war on the poor, the working class, racial minorities, immigrants, women, the LGBTQ+ community, etc., the Democratic Party pays lip service to the interests of the working and oppressed masses while taking every concrete step to undermine them and protect the supremacy of the ruling capitalist elites. Both of these parties are more interested in waging imperialist war and committing genocide with our tax dollars than taking any steps toward improving the lives of the poor and working people in the US.

The poor and working people of Kentucky, and everywhere, need to organize outside of the two major political parties—into political organizations, trade unions, tenant associations, neighborhood councils, mutual aid networks and other organizations that work expressly for the interests of the poor and working masses—to effectively oppose the power of the ruling class of exploiters. The poor and working classes need a party of their own.

Workers’ rights such as the 40-hour workweek, time-and-a-half overtime pay, and minimum wage, were won by—not given to—the working class through organized struggle against the capitalist class. It was only when the ruling class faced the potential of the total collapse of the capitalist system that it reluctantly conceded to the demands of the organized workers, fearing personal financial ruin, or worse yet, that they would have a revolution on their hands if they did otherwise. 

The once strong US labor movement has been considerably weakened over the last century, owing especially to the Cold War era McCarthyist attacks on trade unionists and communists. It is only now experiencing a resurgence in recent years, with strikes from the United Auto Workers (UAW) and Hollywood writers (SAG-AFTRA), to name only a few examples, winning significant demands from their employers.

Politicians write laws, but it is the people themselves who ultimately determine whether they will accept subjugation. Kentucky unions like the AFL-CIO and other unions around the country have demonstrated that to protect the rights we have, like the right to lunch breaks on the job, and win the rights we deserve, our greatest weapon is organized struggle—for it is the people themselves that are the motive force of history, and the people united can never be defeated!