United States | News & Politics

The legislation, House Bill 500, would allow employers to stop offering their workers “reasonable” lunch and rest breaks, mandatory under current Kentucky law, and end the requirement that employees who work seven days in a row receive overtime pay.... According to the Kentucky Lantern, the bill also “(prevents) employers from being punished for not paying minimum wage or overtime pay when an employee is traveling to and from a workplace.”

Kentucky has been in the spotlight recently for other pieces of legislation scaling back worker protections, including one bill passed by the House removing working hour restrictions for 16- and 17-year-olds, which Pratt said would get children “off the couch [and] quit playing Nintendo games.”... It is also the state where, in May 2023, U.S. Department of Labor investigators discovered two 10-year-old workers operating dangerous cooking equipment while working late shifts at a McDonald’s.

The bill passed a Republican-led House committee Wednesday in a party-line vote and now moves to a vote by the full chamber.