Letter from Larry Helminiak, Government Relations Committee Chair:
If you’re reading this on the SCBA page, you are likely the owner of a small business.
I went in business in 1969. There were rules and regulations regarding the insulation business but you could fit them all in a small binder.
Year after year after year, politicians and government agencies have added rules to the point that no one knows them all, and if you break one, you need a lawyer to defend yourself, and even the LAWYER has to look it up to defend you.
There are rules on how to treat your employees. There are rules regarding your company vehicles. Pretty soon some counties in Maryland will have more rules regarding employee compensation depending upon how many employees you have.
Labor laws served a purpose. They fixed a lot of problems and we are all better off now because of them. The issue many people have is that government has gone from an impartial judge to having its thumb on the scale against companies. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) became a partisan joke. Now a new general counsel has taken over and a lot of stuff is going to get fixed. Critics will say that it’s favoring business over workers. But the pendulum is still dramatically on the side of the workers. Business owners don’t want to tilt things back to the day when workers had no rights. They just want things to be a little closer to fair.
A growing economy fixes a lot of labor issues. Low unemployment means workers who don’t like their situations can easily go find another one. Companies with growing revenues can afford to pay more for quality workers. Everyone wins. But when regulation is so burdensome that companies and employers choose not to invest money into their businesses because they don’t see a chance of earning a return on it, everyone loses.
When Donald Trump was elected he promised that for every ONE new regulation he signs into law he will eliminate TWO old regulations. A report came out recently which stated that since January of 2017, for every NEW regulation at the Federal Level, SIXTEEN existing regulations have been removed from the books. Let’s hope this continues.
