Desperate to keep their jobs at all costs. According to Republicans that’s “freedom.”

[HomerRamone]

http://www.salon.com/2014/05/21/gops_quiet_election_scandal_what_tuesdays_results_really_mean_for_workers/

There are the famous examples of cities enacting a higher minimum wage only to have it struck down by conservative state legislatures. They have done the same with paid sick leave laws throughout the country. And needless to say, the attacks on the unemployed are among the worst. From attempts to mandate drug testing to making them jump through hoops that would daunt a star performer at Cirque du Soleil, the freedom-loving Republicans have implemented state processes so bureaucratic that one can only assume it’s designed to make people hate their government. For instance:

[A] bill sponsored by ALEC members that was passed in 2012 stipulated a series of deadlines at which an unemployed worker would have to start accepting a lower-paying job or lose her unemployment benefits. After 13 weeks, she would have to accept any job paying at least 75 percent of her previous wage; after 25 weeks, 70 percent; and after 38 weeks, 65 percent. To ensure compliance with these byzantine regulations (the red tape Republicans so often claim to oppose), the bill required anyone receiving unemployment insurance to submit detailed weekly reports showing that she had applied for at least three jobs per week. It also mandated that the State Department of Labor to audit 1,000 recipients per week.

Businesses must be thrilled. All they have to do is wait around a short while and soon there will be people clamoring for jobs that pay half their former salary. Sweet.

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The overall thrust of this state legislation is to create workers who are docile and employers who are empowered. That may be why Republican legislators in Idaho, Wisconsin, Michigan, Maine, Ohio, Minnesota, Utah and Missouri have been so eager to ease restrictions on when and how much children can work. High schoolers should learn workplace virtues, says the conservative commentator Ben Stein, like “not talking back.” Early exposure to employment will teach 12-year-olds, as the spokesman of an Idaho school district put it, that “you have to do what you’re asked, what your supervisor is telling you.”

Laws are even being written to deny unemployment benefits to people who have allegedly violated or disregarded “the reasonable standards of behavior which the employer expects.” What those standards might be are not explicitly spelled out but it does create yet another reason why an employee might not feel empowered to speak up for her rights or complain about wage theft or, indeed, exercise any agency at all in the workplace. With unemployment being high for years and years on end, one can expect that companies are now filled with nice, docile employees who don’t make any waves at all, nearly desperate to keep their jobs at all costs. According to business that’s how it should be. According to Republicans that’s “freedom.”