Maine’s Governor Paul LePage is not just the darling of the tea party, but he has also proven himself to be one of Maine’s leading resident art critics, as well as someone willing to take the bold step of reversing Maine’s laissez-faire attitude toward its own children and clearing a path for the tykes to again toil for the rich and powerful. LePage captured just 37% of the vote in a three way race to become the governor of Maine. He came under fire early on when he refused to attend a dinner that the NAACP sponsored for Martin Luther King. Lepage responded by telling the organization that they could “kiss my butt.” These were strong words for anyone independent enough to take on a constituency that makes up just 1.2% of Maine’s population. It showed that LePage wasn’t going to be bullied by a belligerent, yet non-existent, special interest group.
When the labor wars heated up in Wisconsin, Ohio, and Michigan LePage opened a new front by demanding that his state’s department of labor take down a pro-labor mural that hung in its lobby. The reason he gave for doing so was because it did not depict both sides of the labor issue. The justification for taking down this mural came from one single anonymous letter complaining to the governor. Originally it was reported that the complaint had come from a fax but, this would have had produced a time stamp on it, so it was later changed to a letter. LePage said, “This is a public building that works with employees and employers. What is it that they don’t understand that it takes two to have a job. It takes somebody to hire you. It takes someone to work. It’s not just the employer.” (NPR 3/28/11)
It quickly brought to mind the administration of George W. Bush when the labor department was against labor, the environment protection agency was against protecting the environment, and the security and exchange commission was against regulating security and exchanges.
The mural that LePage had a problem with contained Rosie the Riveter and the first woman appointed to a US cabinet post, FDR’s labor secretary, Frances Perkins. The mural also depicted first time unionist were allowed to vote anonymously to a 1973 strike that took place for better working conditions for women. Judy Taylor the artist who painted the mural said, “There was never any intention to be pro-labor or anti-labor. It was a pure depiction of facts.” (Talking Points Memo 7/4/2011)
LePage also had a problem with the fact that the rooms were named after labor leaders like Caesar Chavez, Perkins, and even Republican state legislature William Looney who helped end child labor in the state. To this point there is still no word yet whether Maine’s Chamber of Commerce will have to change the names of their meeting rooms and alter their pictures to make them more labor friendly.
At least one of the issues on that mural that LePage seemed to want to erase was Maine’s past with child labor. Maine has regulated Child Labor since 1848. In 1938 a federal law ended the exploitation of children nationally. The minimum wage is Maine is $7.50 an hour but Lepage wants it lowered to $5.25 for the first one hundred and eight days. This new training wage was presented as a positive as it would help younger workers gain work skills that they wouldn’t have had because before they undersold their labor business couldn’t have afforded to hire them. He also wants to make sure that these workers in training can work longer hours during the school year, up to 24 hours a week, and it would allow them to work even longer during vacations, at the reduced rate. This will certainly put even more pressure on Maine’s 7% unemployment rate. Almost without any sense of America’s recent child labor past LePage has said, “I went to work at 11 years old. I became governor. It’s not a big deal. Work doesn’t hurt anybody.”
“The governor’s office argues that allowing students to work more hours could help them save more money for college, citing increasing loan debt among Main students…Opponents argue that if employers were allowed to pay student less than other worker, they might start firing longtime employees in favor of cheaper labor, or firing students as soon as they became ineligible for the lower wage.” ( Melissa Maynard Stateline Staff Writer 4/27/11).
Covered in the first six minutes.
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