FRANKFORT, Ky. (LEX 18) — Several bills that would weaken protections for Kentucky workers have begun moving through the legislative process.
House Bill 500 would eliminate required lunch breaks, required rest periods, and time-and-a-half overtime pay for working seven days in a row. The bill would also decrease the statute of limitations for employment lawsuits from five to three years.
The measure has already passed out of the House Small Business and Information Technology Committee on a 9-4 vote. Its next step is to go to the House floor for a full vote.
Republican Rep. Phillip Pratt, the bill's sponsor, says his goal is to bring Kentucky in line with federal labor law.
"Trying to navigate the federal [and] state labor standards is a nightmare already," Pratt said. "And it's been that way for a long time."
"The fact that you have federal law, which says that you must do this. Then, you have state law that says you must do that," Pratt added. "And to run afoul of them becomes very [easy], very [unintended] because of the fact that there are two different standards that an employer must work under. So basically, what this does is move us right - almost equal - to the federal labor standards, so we actually can navigate that system a whole lot easier."
Pratt believes his bill would benefit workers because it specifies that employers cannot require employees to work during unpaid lunch breaks. That's if the employer chooses to provide a lunch break.
The bill would also allow employers to dock pay if workers eat during their shift outside of a provided unpaid meal period. However, Pratt believes most employers would choose to provide lunch and breaks.
"In today's work environment, to say someone's not going to offer you a lunch break is ludicrous," Pratt said. "Trust me, you're going to offer lunch breaks, you're going to offer breaks, you're gonna do all that."
Currently, Kentucky law requires that employers give workers an unpaid lunch break in the middle of their shift. That lunch break must be provided between hour three and hour five after the start of a shift.
Kentucky law also requires ten-minute rest breaks over every four hours worked.
According to the U.S. Department of Labor, federal law does not require lunch and coffee breaks. Lunch breaks are not considered work time, and employers do not need to compensate for that time. However, when offered by employers, short breaks (5 to 20 minutes) are required to be considered work hours.
So, critics of the bill, like union leaders, believe HB 500 would leave Kentucky workers worse off.
"It would be devastating to all workers in the Commonwealth of Kentucky," said Gerald Adkins, a representative for the Kentucky State AFL-CIO.
"This bill, if passed in its current form, would repeal Kentucky's rest periods, lunch breaks, Kentucky's seven-day overtime laws, and eliminate overtime and minimum wage protections for activities such as travel time between job sites, and donning and doffing of protective gear," Adkins added. "These laws have been in place since 1958, 1974, and 1942, respectively. Why the sudden urgency to repeal laws that are in place to protect Kentucky's workers?"
The Kentucky Center for Economic Policy has criticized the bill for weakening "multiple common sense protections for safe working conditions and fair pay that have been a part of Kentucky's safeguards for more than half a century."
"HB 500 will make work more dangerous by depriving workers of food and rest, incentivizing them to travel too quickly to get to their job site, and discouraging them from taking proper precautions at the start of shifts," the group said in its report. "And it will take pay away from workers when they are moving between job locations, working excessive weeks, and engaging in necessary tasks at the beginning and end of the work day."
Pratt is also the sponsor of House Bill 255, which would weaken the state's child labor laws.
The bill would allow Kentucky 14- and 15-year-olds to work more hours than currently allowed if the person has been expelled from school, has a child to support, and for other reasons. It would also remove restrictions on how long 16- and 17-year-olds can work, even during school.
HB 255 also allows teens younger than 16 to work at certain formerly prohibited activities.
