Immigrants Bear the High Cost of HB 2369's Hypocrisy
Imagine an occupation where there is just over one complaint a year. What would you do? If you are the Washington state legislature, you decide to add thousands of dollars of regulatory costs for every worker, just to prevent that one complaint a year.
In 2016, the Washington State Department of Licensing (DOL) received 5 complaints about injury due to tattoos, and only one regarding permanent cosmetics – also known as microblading – which involves small tattoos in the place of cosmetics. Additionally, while there were 14 complaints of unlicensed permanent cosmetic artists, there were 113 for tattoo artists.
Citing this data, the legislature has decided to add a training requirement for permanent cosmetics, but, ironically, not tattoo artists.
It is part of the absurdity of occupational licensing, where those who have more complaints, but better lobbyists, are promoting legislation that would give them control over their competitors. The bill, HB 2369, would require 100 hours of training to be allowed to engage in microblading, leaving tattoo artists without any requirements. Further, it would create the ridiculous circumstance where tattoo artists with no training could tattoo a face or neck, but could not put a small line in an eyebrow.
The tattoo artists pushing the bill at least acknowledge this discrepancy is a problem. One of the tattoo artists pushing the bill admitted in committee, “Tattooing and piercing may need to do that at another time.” Despite that admission, the existing bill rewards tattoo artists by adding job-killing restrictions to their competitors.
Indeed, they are quite brazen about the goal of locking out competition. One tattoo artist pushing the legislation noted, ominously, about microblading trainers, “The majority are coming from out of country.”
Of course, nobody wants to be the victim of a bad microblader or tattoo artist, and you can find more bad reviews on Yelp, in addition to those reported to the state. The reality, however, is that licensing will do little, if anything, to protect consumers and the private Yelp system is a more effective way to empower consumers without killing opportunity for mostly low-income workers.
First, it is unlikely that creating this costly occupational license will help consumers. As the Obama Administration noted in their study on occupational licensing in 2015, “A wide range of studies have examined whether this happens. With the caveats that the literature focuses on specific examples and that quality is difficult to measure, most research does not find that licensing improves quality or public health and safety.” It is unlikely these new requirements will even impact the one complaint a year received by the Department of Licensing.
Second, it may be claimed that complaints to DOL are the tip of the iceberg. Indeed, that is probably true. It is evidence, however, that Yelp is a more useful consumer tool and more effective at holding people accountable for mistakes than state government. People check Yelp and comment. That is rarely the case with the Department of Licensing.
KOMO TV, which has covered the issue, noted that one satisfied microblading customer, “checked out her testimonials on her Instagram page, made certain she was certified and checked out her salon before going under the microblade.”
There is broad, bipartisan agreement that occupational licensing has very high costs, does little to address the problems, and, perhaps worst of all, locks out low-income workers who have a useful skill. For immigrants and low-income workers, occupational licensing adds costs and time many simply don’t have. As a result, they are either prevented from getting a job or go into the black market.
Washington state legislators should move away from these outdated, costly and ineffective occupational licenses and embrace Yelp and other approaches that empower consumers and truly hold professionals accountable for the quality of their work.