Welcome to an example of what happens when you take an idea too far: according to a GOP Senator from North Carolina, businesses (including food service businesses) should be allowed to "opt out" of regulations requiring employees to wash their hands using the toilet — if they make that opt-out public.
Now, that has just enough head-scratching thinking-it-through to catch the attention, coupled with the suspicion that, regulations and signs admonishing them aside, not all employees are as diligent as it seems.
But, really. Let's take this idea a step longer. Sen. Tillis seems to think public disclosure creates a sufficient customer reaction for the market to drive course corrections by business. I think that may be true for broad categories of concerns, but raises its own issues:
1. This particular item is a public health matter. This isn't even a "we use/don't use GMO coffee beans" kind of a personal belief thing. Not washing your hands potentially puts customers (heck, other workers) at risk of infectious disease.
2. What precisely should be the nature of sufficient disclosure. A sign in the bathroom saying "We don't force our employees to scrub up after they take a shit"? Maybe a sign on the front door? Or perhaps on a little bulletin board way in the back. Or a note on the web page?
Better yet, since that seems so declasse, maybe just a notice tucked away somewhere "This establishment has opted out of City Regulation 103-249b, and we pass on the savings to you!" Or, heck, maybe it's a religious objection, in which case it can simply say, "We believe in freedom of conscience, and will serve you in keeping with our faith in the Almighty."
3. Now multiply that by all the other regulations a company might choose to disassociate from. Who's going to look up the meaning of each and every city, county, state, and federal regulation a company chooses to opt out of because MARKET FREEDOM!?
4. How soon before companies argue that they shouldn't have to make such disclosures? Compelling such commercial speech is clearly against the First Amendment. Why punish a company that chooses to free itself from the regulatory morass? "Let the surviving marketplace choose!" should be our mantra. Word will eventually get around about which restaurants have a higher dysentery rate, right? In the meantime, enjoy your latte!
5. How many regulations will we need about what and how a company reveals such deregulated items to the public?
Also, I know it's almost considered axiomatic in some circles, but what exactly does the US being "one of the most regulated nations in the history of the planet" actually mean? How was that measured? Is that necessarily a bad thing (sounds kind of Old Testament to me, Senator)?
GOP Senator: Don’t Force Employees To Wash Their Hands After Using Toilet
In a week packed with news over concerns for public health, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) described his own history of opposing certain health and hygiene regulations, including those that require employees to wash their hands after using the bathroom.
I'd like to opt-out of senators from North Carolina.
I think all the people who reflexively gripe about regulations have a poor grasp on history. We didn't start really booming as a nation (across all sectors, not just the robber barons) until we started regulating things. Sure, some rules are byzantine or perhaps unnecessary, and some might have good intentions but are written in such a way that they create additional problems, but those should be addressed on a case-by-case basis rather than just burning the whole system to the ground.
+Brittany Constable And that's the thing — there's "this regulation is silly or poorly implemented and needs to be tossed out or fixed" and then there's "regulation is evil because FREEDOM". The two get too mixed up a lot of the time, and the latter is too often used on behalf of monied interests who are more interested in money.
Indeed, most of the push-back against regulatory regimes is where they impact on business activity and personal property. When it comes to regulating personal behaviors, a lot (though not all) of those anti-reg folk suddenly start talking about natural law and God and the Bible and of course people shouldn't be allowed to do that.
Having dealt with some big businesses, I will always come down on the side of regulations unless there's solid evidence that a rule should be changed/removed. You'll never convince me that a big business is going to act in the best interests of their customers over the best interests of their own wallets.
Like, I used to work at Disneyland, which frequently went above and beyond the safety regulations imposed by California (which are above and beyond the safety regulations imposed by other states, as I've discovered to my horror visiting other theme parks). But still, in the case of a full-blown fire, we were to get out and leave the guests to fend for themselves, because it's cheaper to settle with the family of a guest than to pay out AD&D on an employee. Luckily that's an absolute worst case scenario that I don't think has ever actually come up, but still.
It always amuses me when people in this country are shocked when a conservative says something perfectly in keeping with the Libertarian/Conservative movements goal to roll the country back to a time before 09/14/1901.
Anti-vax: check
Laissez-fair/gilded age economy: check
Fear of immigrants: check
Making women property: almost
Getting rid of safety regulations: almost
The problem with such outrage over regulations is that it's so selective. It's the same as states' rights – people support states' rights for some things, but certainly not for others. (And the position changes over time – a few years ago, people were clamoring that states should have the right to allow gay marriage. Today, those same people would clamor that the Feds should establish gay marriage nationwide.)
But back to regulation. The same person who says that companies should be able to opt-out of handwashing requirements, or that people should be able to opt-out of vaccination requirements, would probably not support:
(1) someone who opts out of paying taxes to support the military
(2) a male who opts out of registering for the draft
(3) someone who opts out of obeying a command from a police officer to leave the scene of a disturbance (well, even that depends upon the "disturbance" in question)
(4) someone who opts out of obtaining that pesky little thing called citizenship before driving a car or attending a state university
They are just trying to prove that gay marriage will lead to marriage with animals.
For a senator to come out publicly about this particular issue, where just about everybody wants our food handlers to have shit-free hands, means something deep and personal to him, I think.
Keep your fetish out of our public policy, Tillis.