New legislation introduced Monday in Wisconsin would allow children as young as 14 to serve alcohol to restaurant patrons, the latest in a string of state legislatures’ proposals to roll back regulations around work activities for minors.
Wisconsin law currently requires servers to be at least 18 to pour alcohol, mix drinks and deliver beer, wine and spirits to a table. Only West Virginia and Maine allow minors to serve alcohol, according to the National Institutes of Health.
“In my neck of the woods, there’s a lot of kids that are willing to go to work, but these simple little limitations kind of prohibit that,” Green, who owns a bar in northern Wisconsin, told The Washington Post. “We’re just trying to clean that up and give them an opportunity to get to take part in the workforce.”
Children’s advocates say the proposal puts underage servers at risk by making them the middleman between customers and intoxicating beverages.
“We don’t see any reason to weaken protections below the age of 18,” said Reid Maki, director of advocacy at the Child Labor Coalition. “We share concerns that teen servers below that age might feel pressure to illegally serve friends below the drinking age, might be subject to sexual harassment by drunk patrons, or might have opportunities to drink alcohol themselves at work.”
Stafsholt in an interview said he considered those concerns, but concluded that “the tangible pros of this bill outweigh the hypothetical cons.”
Bartenders, who are licensed by the state government, would be responsible for looking after younger servers, Stafsholt said, and ensuring that underage patrons are not being served alcohol.
Beer plays a large role in Wisconsin’s economy and culture. In 2020, beer supported nearly 65,000 jobs in the state and accounted for $9.8 billion in economic output, according to the National Beer Wholesalers Association and Beer Institute.
The state’s Major League Baseball club in Milwaukee is called the Brewers. The sitcom “Laverne & Shirley,” which ran for eight years on network TV, revolves around the lives of two women who work at a brewery in the city.
Monday’s proposal joins a raft of measures passed or under consideration in other states that loosen restrictions on minors’ work.
A law passed in Arkansas in March eliminated work permits and age verification requirements for workers younger than 16, and similar legislation is advancing in Missouri. An Iowa bill that allows children as young as 14 to work night shifts and 15 to work on assembly lines also contains a provision legalizing alcohol service by minors. Other child labor proposals have been introduced in Minnesota, Ohio and Georgia.
The Wisconsin bill is narrower in scope than the other state legislation. But as with the other measures, its proponents point to businesses’ hiring difficulties in the face of historically low unemployment.
The idea for the bill, Stafsholt said, came from business owners in his western Wisconsin district that struggled with worker shortages while serving the state’s famous fish fry dinners during Lent.
Employers complained that their businesses lost hours of productivity because underage waiters could serve food, but not beer, leading to bottlenecks and slow service at the bar.
But Stafsholt also said removing government regulations around work was another goal of the legislation.
“Those kids are actually learning that the government shouldn’t restrict what you can and can’t do in your abilities to have a job and earn income,” he said. “If those kids have the ability to walk those beverages back across the floor along with the fish to the people who ordered them, that’s going to be a higher value to the business owner.”