Date: Thu, 5 May 2016 11:48:54 -0400
From: cabe
Subject: Mike Phillips on HB2 “common sense privacy law”
Mike Phillips argued that HB2 was simply common sense, with a focus on bathroom privacy. His comment and many, many others entirely overlook the blunt (very blunt) fact that the NC legislature has stripped local governments, including Chatham County and the Town of Pittsboro, of their ability (some of us might claim their right) to govern the way workers are treated.
Here is a quote from HB2:
The provisions of this Article supersede and preempt any ordinance, regulation, resolution, or policy adopted or imposed by a unit of local government or other political subdivision of the State that regulates or imposes any requirement upon an employer pertaining to compensation of employees, such as the wage levels of employees, hours of labor, payment of earned wages, benefits, leave, or well?being of minors in the workforce.
Note the words supersede and preempt ANY ordinance, regulation, resolution, or policy that those local governing bodies might determine to be useful and beneficial to their own citizens. Note further that this provision does not allow local government bodies even to regulate the well-being of minors in the workforce. You care about children? You probably ought to care about this issue, too.
Yes, there is plenty of outcry about the bathroom elements of the bill and those arguments need to be heard. But we all ought to be deeply concerned about the blatant theft of local governmental responsibilities by the NC Legislature. It seems to me that this preemption and supersession is a gross over-reach by the legislators, many of whom loudly proclaim their advocacy for a hands-off attitude toward the federal government for precisely the kind of activities that they have now taken away from local governing bodies.
There just seems to be quite a lot of hypocritical Big Brother-ism in this legislation.
Pat Cabe