Badly Crafted Law Fit Only For Stillbirth Draconian Approach Why Make Firms With No Breast-Feeding Moms Comply?

Who could oppose motherhood, let alone nursing mothers? No one we know. Breast-feeding’s good.

But it is a poor kind of assistance to nursing moms, and to working women generally, that relies on the discredited tools of bossy regulations and tax-funded bureaucracy.

Nevertheless, legislators who ought to know better are knuckling under to House Bill 1194. This bill would require every Washington state employer (no exceptions) to provide a clean, private, lockable workplace location where nursing moms can pump their breasts. The state Department of Labor & Industries, which already drives small business batty with its Draconian approach to regulations, would enforce the new rule.

Also, the bill says employers can designate themselves “baby-friendly” if they prepare a “workplace breast-feeding policy” that meets the approval of the state Department of Health. The bill ignores the cost of bureaucracy required for its implementation. It makes no provision for notifying employers of the new obligations or the penalties for noncompliance.

Women who own businesses - and their numbers are exploding - will recognize the pitfalls. They don’t need mandates to implement good ideas and they’re tired of mandates to implement impractical ones. Already, our overblown government confiscates 40 percent of every dollar they earn. Already, in addition to the mission of their businesses, employers face 58 sets of regulations enforced by 28 federal, state and local agencies.

Feel-good regulations always sound better in an election-year speech than they do when real-world workplaces try to comply.

What about employers who rent their quarters and thus cannot control the building’s restroom facility? How complicated and expensive would it be to provide the required facilities for parking lot espresso stands, delivery truck drivers, police officers? Why mandate compliance by small firms with no nursing-mom employees?

Washington’s business regulation climate already is a hindrance to small business formation and the recruitment of good-paying industries. That hurts women, who better can achieve “babyfriendly workplaces” with the flexible tools of persuasion, ingenuity and voluntary cooperation, one workplace situation at a time. Crude political mandates just breed hostility, bureaucracy, taxes and litigation.

, DataTimes MEMO: See opposing view under headline: Breast-feeding bill imperfect but needed

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